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cannedpeachesxp · 11 months

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Back:drop (Part III)

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Quick Summary: In which Penniton learns some new lessons, the hard way.

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“Those aren’t monkeys,” Penni said in a low voice, backing away from the monsters as more crowded near her.

“Emblem heartless, just the kind we’re looking for,” Demyx said “You can tell by the heart emblem on their chests.”

Penni stayed silent.

Visualize, visualize, visualize…

“Now would be a good time to use that keyblade of yours Penni,”

Visualize, visualize, visualize,

“Penni?”

Something like this should’ve been easy for her. She had the ability to take out these bugs, so why couldn’t she just whip out her key and get it over with?

Why was she shaking?

She didn’t even have the chance to process it, one of the heartless suddenly took a lunge at her, much too fast for her to react.

Much too fast for her to scream.

No claws ever reached her though, as she was harshly pulled away from the line of impact, then just a second later she heard the loud ‘twang!’ of a guitar ring out, and a powerful blast of water shot right at the heartless, knocking it to the ground.

“Don’t blank out on me like that, Penni!”

Penniton blinked a few times, taking in heavy breaths after subconsciously holding them. She was surprised to see the large, if not oversized, instrument Demyx was gripping, the intricate design of it catching her interest for a split second.

“Demyx…did you do that?” Penni breathed out, clutching her heart, feeling a slight ache in her chest. It was probably the anxiety of the situation.

“Well, yeah, but-” The blonde strummed a few more strings of his guitar, a veil of water surrounding the two of them, it kept the heartless away from them momentarily, giving the girl time to think. “-what happened just now? You froze up completely.”

Penni frowned, as much as she’s been nagging Demyx, when it came to actually acting she wasn’t being much of a team player. The least she could do was give him an explanation for her nonsensical behavior. “I…can’t do this, I can’t summon my keyblade- I’m scared just looking at those things!”

Honestly, Penni expected Demyx to freak out, or get upset, some sort of negative reaction. But instead of any of those, he calmly said, “I get that all the time, stop thinking about how scared you are and push that feeling back, focus on another feeling.”

“Push it back?” Penni thought about it for a moment, she thought about what else she was feeling about the heartless besides being afraid of them. She thought about what they had done to her world and home, and how angry she felt because of it. A familiar burning sensation filled Penni, the more she dwelled on, the more she felt the desire to hit those heartless as hard as she could. And soon, she felt the heaviness of the keyblade in her hand. The girl couldn’t help but exclaim gleefully, “Hey, it worked!”

“Alright, now give those heartless a run for their money!” Demyx shouted, the water veil dropping. Penni immediately rushed out at the heartless, slamming her keyblade as hard as she could into their bodies. Almost tripping from the amount of force she put into her attacks.

She quickly regained her balance, continuing to smack around the creatures until none were left.

She whacked the final heartless with her blade causing its existence to end, its body manifesting a pink, glistening heart that floated up into the sky before disappearing as well.

“A heart…” She gently muttered, her chest greatly heaving. The grip on her keyblade loosened as she looked around to see there were no more dark creatures surrounding her, she could calm down now.

As the girl caught her breath, she looked at the sky for a moment. There were a lot of heartless just now, and from what Penni knew. All of those creatures were living people once; who somehow lost their hearts. But how does one lose a heart versus simply dying of natural causes and passing on? If there’s a difference, and you lose your heart and turn into a heartless, can your life never be redeemed after that? Penniton’s face twisted in confusion for a moment, shaking her head at the thought. There was no need to rack her brain over those questions.

Besides, the implications of them frightened her.

“I knew you could do it, Penni!” Demyx said, “Y’know, you're pretty good with that keyblade, you kinda reminded me of some sort of baseball player.”

Penni let out a giggle, holding her keyblade like a big metal bat. “Batter up!” She stated, giving the blonde a grin. That’s when she noticed something left behind on the ground, yellow orbs all scattered about. Upon closer inspection, she was able to recognize what the distinguishable object was.

“Munny?” Penni questioned, picking up a few of the orbs in the palm of her hand.

“Yeah! All the heartless drop some.”

“Hm, that’s gonna come in handy.” She picked up the rest of the coins, slipping the small pile into her coat pockets. “By the way, you didn’t do too bad yourself, water-boy! I mean, I had no idea you could do all that…stuff!”

Penni struggled to find the right words.

“Aw shucks Penni, it’s just a little water magic. I mean, I could explain it some more if you-” Demyx didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as a black object swooped from under him, causing him to lose his balance completely like he’d been knocked off his feet. Penni attempted to grab hold of him by the arms so he wouldn’t topple over, but unfortunately, she lacked the upper body strength- weak nerd arms. They both came crashing down next to each other.

And hard.

“Owhh…”

“At least you’re not the one who landed face-first in the dirt,” Penni said straight-faced, lifting herself off the ground. Her eyes scanned the area, looking for whatever caused the falling out. “Was it another heartless?”

It wasn’t until she spotted the silhouette of someone with a pointy hat.

Wait…was that Peter’s shadow?

It looked amused, its body moving as if it was laughing, then it blew a raspberry at the duo.

Ah, so that’s how it was gonna be.

Penni sprang to her feet without a moment’s waste and sprinted towards the shadow as it started running off. “C’mon Demyx, we gotta catch that shadow!” She yelped as the blonde scrambled to get up on his feet and follow behind her.

“Penni- wait up, this isn’t even part of the mission!” Demyx was right, this wasn’t at all part of the mission…but she didn’t want to leave Peter hanging.

“I know, this won’t take long, I promise!”

Penni wasn’t even paying attention to where she was going, her eyes were on the quick twisting and swerving nature of the shadow, her feet running wherever it went.

At one point in the chase, Penni and Demyx became split up in their path, more heartless cutting off the path from behind Penni.

“It’s okay, you go up ahead, I got this!” The blonde said, whipping out his guitar. Penni nodded as she ran on, mildly guilty for leaving Demyx alone, but at the same time glad he trusted her.

Twisting through greenery and trees, jumping over logs, and ducking under low-hanging branches

The only thing keeping her going was the adrenaline, this was the most she’s run since she was on her junior high track and field team.

In the high of the chase, Penni saw out of the corner of her eye a bright light, it soon flew beside her, and Penni’s movements slowed a bit.

“Tink! I-” Penni was abruptly silenced as Tink’s mouth moved quickly as if she was explaining something, though the only thing the girl heard was the jingling of tiny bells. “Ah…Tink, in the nicest way possible, I have no idea what you're saying.”

Tinkerbell stopped and gave her an exasperated look, putting her head and her hands, shaking them like she was disappointed.

“Well, it’s not exactly like I grew up learning how to speak fairy…” Penni mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck.

The fairy then made a few hand movements, one of them being that she raised her hands over her head, moving them up like she was making the shape of a hat. She then pointed ahead, moving her hands forward and furrowing her eyebrows.

“Oh! Peter’s shadow,” It suddenly clicked for Penni. “I was just chasing after him, he couldn’t have gotten far though. I saw him going right this way.”

Tinkerbell seemed satisfied with this answer, nodding happily and gesturing to Penni to ‘come on!’ zipping off without a warning.

Penni was quick to follow the fairy, but she was quite fast on her wings and was way ahead of her.

“Wait up Tink!” Penni called out, careful not to trip over any rocks and foliage. Tinkerbell sped to a clear opening, looking around for where the shadow could’ve gone. But as she was searching, she failed to notice the several dark spots on the ground beginning to pool under her. Before Penni could even speak another word a heartless jumped up in the air toward Tink, swiping at her, causing her to fall to the ground in an attempt to avoid getting sliced up.

“Hey, not nice!” The girl’s keyblade had made contact with the heartless in a flash, knocking them away like bowling pins as she quickly scooped up the small fairy in her hand. “Why don’t you pick on people your own size?”

Penniton sized herself up for a second.

“Or, like- my size will do.” Tinkerbell jingled rapidly as she floated over to Penni’s shoulder, “Alright, I get it!”

Penni made quick work of the small fry heartless, thankfully, they weren’t the monkey kind, so it was easy to handle them. It was the next batch of heartless that appeared around the girl.

“More of them?” These heartless were different, they were small and cone-shaped. They floated around like birds and had red-yellowish spiked hats on top of them. In fact, they had a whole fiery motif going on with them. “Does that mean…”

Without warning, balls of flame were thrown at Penni, in which she barely managed to dodge, quickly dropping to the dirt floor. “Ouch…not fun…hey!”

She quickly patted off the bit of fire that caught on her coat. There was no way she was gonna go out by being fried like an egg, so she quickly got herself up, and swung her blade at monsters. But they were swiftly able to dodge, backing away when the weapon came close to them. All the while, the heartless were throwing all kinds of attacks at Penni.

She was swatting at oversized flies, and getting immensely frustrated in the process. The girl especially wanted to scream when fire landed directly on her hand, and it burned badly. Penni hissed in pain as Tink jangled some more, attempting to tell her something.

“Tink, you know I can’t understand you.” Penni groaned, taking cover over an old, fallen tree to catch her breath. She flew in front of the girl and made some jagged movements that looked like she was holding a weapon.

“My keyblade? What about it?”

The fairy then severed around a bit, a glowing trail of dust following behind her. Penni squinted, her eyes adjusting to the pattern of words that were spelled out.

“Bliz…” Penni trailed off, “Tink it’s like 70 degrees right now what are you talking about.”

She gave her an irritated look and pointed at the heartless with her hands pointed like she was holding a weapon, and mouthed the word again.

“You want me to say that?” Penni wasn’t exactly sure what that would do or how it would help, but she got herself up. Stepping out from her hiding spot, she pointed her keyblade right at the red-coated creatures, and yelled, “Blizzard!”

Pieces of ice shot out of the keyblade, shooting right through the heartless and destroying them, cold wind filled the surrounding area, the light breeze blowing onto Penni’s face.

This left the remaining heartless staggered, taking this chance Penni hurled her and her keyblade towards the creatures, knocking whatever life that was left out of them, hearts floated into the sky, enveloped in a murky darkness. All that remained was faintly glowing orbs of munny left on the ground.

The girl took several deep breaths, dropping her to knees, she felt her keyblade dissipate beside it as it hit the ground. A concerned fairy drifted over to her shoulder, a slight ringing sounded by her ear.

“Tink…did you see that?” Penni turned towards the fairy with the biggest smile on her face. “I just did magic! I had no idea my keyblade couldn’t even do that. I would’ve never known if it wasn’t thanks to you, Tinkerbell!”

Tink gave Penni a bashful look, waving her hand as if she was to say ‘Oh, it was nothing’.

Penni opened her mouth to say something else but then noticed a recognizable shadow cast nearby the girl and the fairy.

“Peter’s shadow…” Penni murmured, her voice filled with displease. “Because of you, Tinkerbell could’ve been badly hurt, or worse. Your antics caused a whole lot of trouble, was that what you wanted out of this?”

Peter’s shadow face twisted into a frown, and it looked like he was sulking. The fairy floated over to the shadow and said a few words in her jingling language. The shadow nodded, rubbing his hand on his chest as if he was saying ‘sorry’. Tinkerbell gave him a sympathetic smile, and then the shadow turned to Penni, grinning in his own unique way, giving her a small wave.

It seemed like the shadow had learned his lesson, and all was forgiven, quite easily it seemed. Tinkerbell and the shadow had to be close, Penni thought, for Tink to be so forgiving.

That must be such a strong friendship, an unbreakable bond.

Penni gave a small wave back, her mouth curved upwards.

While Penni’s hand was still in the air, Tinker flew back over and placed her hands on a lone finger, shaking it.

“Ah, I should be the one saying thank you, I would’ve been toast if it wasn’t for your help, literally.”

Sassy as ever, the fairy rolled her eyes, waving bye to Penni one last time before she and the shadow hurried off, probably to find Peter.

At that moment, Penni found the burning sensation of her hand coming back to her, well actually, it had never left, the girl had just ignored it after a while. But now she was left with only herself and her thoughts, she realized her hand hurt like she had dipped it in a pot of boiling stew. Maybe she could use that spell on her hand and-

“Penniton! You’re okay!” The blondie yelled out in joy, his arms wrapping around Penni a bit too tightly for her liking. “Aw jeez Penni, why’d you have to leave me like that, it was so scary and you were so serious!”

He continued his anxious (and mildly funny, though Penni would never say it) rambling until the girl choked out the words “I’m fine Demyx, but if you keep hugging me like this I might pass out from lack of air…”

Demyx let out a ‘my bad!’ and let go of Penni, who took in a deep breath of air.

“Everything went fine, I found Peter’s shadow and took care of a couple of heartless while I was at it, so I’d like to believe our mission is pretty much completed.”

“Music to my ears,” Demyx sighed with relief, putting up his fist “You definitely carried the whole operation, ouhhhh what would’ve I done without you?”

“It’s kinda like what you said Demyx, just push through it.” This time, Penni returned the fist bump with no worries of disingenuous feelings, but when she made contact with the gloved fist, she winced at the pain of her toasted hand. “Ouch…I forgot about that…”

“Your hand! One second I have just the thing for that,” Demyx said, quickly shuffling around his coat pocket for something. He soon handed Penni a small bottle with a curiously green liquid in it. “It’s an elixir, it’ll heal your hand right up!”

“Ohh, I get it,” Penni took the bottle, looking Demyx dead in the eye, “you're trying to poison me.”

…

“What?”

“Listen man, I don’t know what I did to get on your bad side but-”

“Penni I’m not trying to poison you, I’m being serious!”

“I ain’t drinking that Demyx, I was taught not to take handouts, especially weird drinks, from strangers.”

“Strangers?” Demyx clutched the spot where his heart would’ve been, “Penniton, you're killing me here, we’ve been through so much together already!”

“Not enough for me to drink whatever that is, and you just pulled it out of your coat pocket, I doubt that’s sanitary,” Penni said bluntly, waving away the blonde.

“Look, I swear on my non-existent heart, this is perfectly safe. In fact.” He pulled out another bottle, “I’ll drink one with you, then if it’s really poison, which it’s not, we’ll go down together.”

Penni gave Demyx a hard stare before glancing at the elixir bottle, it was relatively normal looking, packed in a plastic bottle with labels and all. She huffed, pulling off the cap. “Alright…on three.”

“One…two…three!”

The partners both started chugging the small bottle, and to Penni’s surprise, the substance wasn’t terrible. In fact, as she finished the last few drops, she felt energized, and the pain in her hand was leaving her.

“See? I told you it would be fine, Penni! And I bet you feel way better now, right?” Demyx joked, playfully bumping her with his elbow. “And with our mission finished, we can take some leisure time!”

“Leisure time?” Penni questioned, “But, Saix said we had to return back to the castle as soon as we finished our mission.”

“Taking a few hours extra to RTC isn’t gonna hurt anybody, besides, Saix can wait. Besides, going on missions and then immediately going back to the castle doesn’t sound that enticing.”

RTC? That probably meant…return to castle, right?

“I mean…I guess we could take a break before heading back, but where would we go?”

Demyx gave Penni a sly grin, “I just so happen to know a spot.”

“So, what do you think of the place?” The blonde asked.

Twilight Town was quite nice, the yellowish-orange sky complimented the overall rustic aesthetic of the town. Penni inhaled the scent of something sweet from a nearby bakery, maybe later she could buy something for herself. The sound of laughter filled her ears as children rode past on shiny bicycles.

It reminded her of the town the boarding school resided in, the quaintness of it all. It almost made her homesick, and to think a place like that was gone.

“Cozy.” Penni simply stated, giving Demyx a soft smile.

“And get this, the sun here never sets- it’s evening all day!”

“A never-ending sunset? How does anyone keep track of time?”

“Clocks, duh.” Demyx said, straight-faced. Penni stared at him to see if he was actually being serious, this was confirmed when she saw the tiniest crack of a grin on his face.

“Alright, whatever, funny guy.” She said, clicking her tongue.

“Aw, I was just kidding, Pen-pen!”

Penni winced at the nickname, shaking off the memories that flashed through her mind, ignoring them with a question, “So what do you do around here?”

“All kinds of things! There’s a corner store where you can get cup noodles for real cheap, a bookstore that sells manga- oh, and CDs!”

“You're a music kinda guy, aren’t you?” Penni smugly asked the blonde.

“How’d you guess?” The blonde laughed, “But yeah! I love music, there are so many different forms of it, and a whole bunch of instruments come together to make awesome pieces of work. It’s a whole art form, Penni!”

Penni nodded along, it was always nice to hear someone talk about what they love.

“And I’m guessing the guitar is your favorite instrument, right? You’ll have to show me what you can play outside of our missions sometimes, y’know, when we’re not fighting for our lives.”

Demyx looked surprised for a moment, then, a smile grew on his face. A big, beaming smile.

“Anytime Penni! In fact, I can even teach you how to play!” The girl didn’t have a chance to say anything else, she was already being dragged into the bookstore, “There’s this one song you should listen to, the band makes these really heartfelt rock songs, I’ll think you’ll like it!”

As Penni was dragged to the back of the store, she thought for a moment. Did she have a favorite music genre? Artist? When was the last time she sat down and turned on a song she really liked?

She didn’t even own an mp3 player.

“This one is pretty popular, but not too much that it’s overrated.” Demyx plopped a pair of headphones on Penni’s head, and she closed her eyes, letting her mind focus on the music.

Almost Immediately, the rift of an electric guitar was heard, and then a melody. The vocals along with the heavy bangs of drums meshed together just right, and altogether, it felt meaningful.

It felt passionate.

Penni’s head nodded along to the song, it resonated through her, and much to her surprise, she hardly registered that the song had reached its climax and, had ended.

Penni blinked a few times, pulling off the headphones, a small grin coming to her face. “That was really good!” She said in a bubbly voice, the melody still echoing in her mind. “Do you have any more I can listen to?”

“Well there's this one artist, her music is super great, it’s a mix of R&B and pop, and sometimes some guitar is thrown in there. Actually, did you want to borrow my mp3 player?”

“You don’t have to do that, Demyx-”

“Nah, it’s cool, I insist! I already own most of the songs on cd already, so I wouldn’t miss it…just don’t break it okay? It was kinda a heavy investment…”

Penniton let out a giggle, “Alright, you have my word.”

Demyx laughed along, his eyes softening just a tiny bit, “Y’know, you look better when you smile, you should do it more often.”

She froze for a moment, at a loss for words, muttering out “Can you blame me for not doing that? I mean, I don’t have a lot going that would give me a reason too.”

“Maybe, but finding little things to be happy about is better than being gloomy all the time.”

Penni hummed, maybe so. It would do her better to at least try to stay motivated. After all, who knew how many more missions she would have to go through until she could see her hometown again, her mom?

How long until she could see…a certain sunset haired girl.

“We have some more time to waste, why don’t you show me that corner store you were talking about? I’m literally starving.”

Upon exiting the dark portal, when Penni stepped into the progressive familiarity of the castle, slightly surprised to see more black coat members hanging about.

“See Luxord? I told you she would be fine.” Snickered the voice of Xigbar, lightly nudging his arm into the man sitting next to him.

“Indeed she is, I have to say it was unexpected.” Admitted a man with blonde hair in a caesar cut matched with an interesting-looking beard, light blue eyes, and what Penni spotted to be several piercings on his ears.

The piercings were quite cool to her.

The man named ‘Luxord’ handed the gunner what seemed to be a few bits of munny, the gesture itself made her question what exactly they were doing before she showed up. The man made his way to Penni.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Penniton, perhaps I may have misjudged you. By the looks of it, you were able to handle your own just fine.”

Yeah, as long as you don’t count her hand, everything went ‘just fine’.

“Ah- thank you? But I don’t think we’ve ever met, how did you know-”

“Word of mouth travels fast around here, kiddo.” Xigbar said, leaning back into the white cushions of the couch.

Penni muttered a small ‘oh’. “So, I wanted to ask, there are thirteen people in the organization, right? I’ve only met a few people but where’s everyone else?

“Probably still out doing their missions, we got done on good time!” Demyx explained boastfully, seemingly proud.

“Truthfully speaking,” Luxord gave him a look of denial, “You were the last to get back. Your co-workers most likely are off on their own activities. You didn’t drag the poor girl on one of your ‘detours’, did you?”

“It was just a quick lunch break before heading back…”

“Uh huh…but I digress. Penniton, you’re bound to run into the others soon, after all, this whole castle is crawling with opportunities to make conversation with your peers.”

“Now let’s not forget, not everyone is worth the time to make conversation with,” Xigbar remarked.

The guitarist spoke up, “If by that you mean Larxene, I second that point.”

“What’s wrong with Larxene?” Penni raised an eyebrow, curious.

“She’s such a witch!”

“How about we let her decide other people’s character by her own experience, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or simply trust word of mouth.”

“Funny coming from you, Luxord.” The eyepatch man snickered, flicking a small munnny coin into the hair before catching it.

The man gave a content sigh, “Alas, who am I to deny a light-hearted bet? After all, we're only human.”

“Well technically,” Demyx interjected “none of us are actually-”

“Enough of that, did you gain any new lessons on your first mission, Penniton?”

“Well, I did learn this really cool trick,” Penni raised her keyblade in the air, “You just hold it up like this and say-”

“That isn’t a toy, Penniton.”

Penni’s joyful expression dropped from her face, replaced with pale misery as she turned around to see a displeased Saix.

“Saix, this isn’t- I was just-” Penni stumbled over her words as she lowered the blade, attempting to formulate an excuse.

“There’s a time and place for its use, but running amok and throwing it around the castle isn’t one of them. The organization does not tolerate crude use of weaponry, Xemnas will be hearing about this incident.”

The girl de-summoned her blade, she gazed gratefully at the floor as she mumbled the word “Sorry…” to Saix in a meek, hushed voice.

“Lighten up Saix. All the kid wanted to do was flash the thing around some, there’s no need to tattle on boss man for this.” Xigbar stated plainly, resting his head against his fist. “And it’s not like you rag on Demyx whenever he insists on playing his sitar, or whatever. So what? You jealous or something?”

Saix narrowed his eyes at the gunman, simply letting out a scoff. He handed both Penni and Demyx a paper form of some kind. “After every mission, it’s required that you fill out a report. Turn this in back to me by tomorrow.”

Quickly surveying the paper, it was honestly elementary work. All she had to do was put down the place, the objective, and the results. Her eyes drifted to Demyx, and judging by his face, he was a little less than happy to receive the paper.

“I’ll be sure to get this done,” Penni said in a polite tone, hurrying off back to her room so she could escape from the uncomfortableness of being around the blue-haired member.

What Penni wasn’t expecting though was a certain eyepatch-wearing man to be trailing behind her.

“So, you finished up your first mission, not bad.”

“Is that really much of an accomplishment?” Penniton said, not looking back to the gunner, “You guys do that type of stuff every day.”

“Learn to take a compliment, Firecracker, all I’m saying is that you didn’t do bad for someone who just got their keyblade just yesterday.” He let out a laugh, “Luxord was betting that you would’ve kicked the bucket on your first day.”

That explains the shifting of munny Penni caught earlier.

“Wait, do the other organization members not think I’m, for lack of a better term, that strong?”

“That depends, do you consider yourself strong, kid? Because you sure don’t hold yourself up that way.”

Penni whipped her head around to say something to the man, but was bewildered to see no one standing there.

“If you walk around looking like a sad kicked dog all the time that’s what people will see you as.” Xigbar’s voice had shifted upwards, and Penni followed that direction, she said a demented ‘huh?’ to see the gunner crouching upside down, on the ceiling.

“That’s…not how physics works.” Penni stated, “And I don’t carry myself around like a ‘kicked dog’.”

“As if!” He laughed, “You got barked at by Saix once and looked like you were about to curl up in a ball and-”

“I get it! Goodness, where is your filter?”

Xigbar let out another chuckle, “Don’t have one!”

Penni huffed, resuming her beeline to wherever her room was, making a mental note at one point she would have to start taking walks around the castle to start getting to know the layout of it.

Yet, she continued to hear the tapping of boots above her as she walked.

“By the way, earlier,” The patch-wearing man said as his boots hit the floor, landing right in front of the girl, causing her to flinch. “You were holding your keyblade entirely wrong.”

“How would you know if I’m holding it wrong? You’ve probably never held one of these in your life.” She retorted. He scoffed rather loudly and said the words ‘as if’ in a low mumble Penni couldn’t hear.

“I’m just saying kid, if you don’t get used to your keyblade soon, you might just find yourself in some pretty deep trouble.” Xigbar finally stepped out of Penni’s way, letting her pass.

“Sure, thanks for the advice.”

No, not really.

When Penni at last found her room, she was relieved at the thought of being able to flop down on her bed and process the day.

She opened her door, adjusted herself to the sight of her room, and screamed.

White, skinny, and most certainly slithery creatures turned her heads to her when she opened the door. In a flash, they glided past Penni through the door, like liquid (or like a slinky), both equally as weird, their bodies stretching and retracting, as if they had no bones. It gave the girl shivers.

She watched them slither down the hallway and turned around the corner, passing the redhead as he was walking past them. He looked nonchalant and unreasonably calm, hardly sparing the creatures a glance.

“Where’s the fire? It’s kinda rude to scream out of nowhere, Pen-pen.” Axel stated, taking a bite of some blue colored ice cream on a popsicle stick.

“What in the world were those? What were they doing in my room!” Penni was shaking, like she had just seen a ghost…what if those things were ghosts? Do ghosts usually look that gross? Why was she being haunted by ghosts?

Focussss, Penni! There’s probably a reasonable, understandable explanation for those things.

“Those guys?” Axel pointed behind them the directions the creatures just left in, “those are just the dusks.”

“The wha?”

“Ah, that’s right, you're still a newbie.” Axel took another bite of his ice cream, beginning his explanation. “The dusks are just another type of nobody, and I know what you're thinking, ‘But Axel, I thought nobodies were the people in the organization!’. You would still be right about that, but the organization members are special nobodies, even though we lost our hearts, we’re so ‘strong-willed’ our bodies and minds remain. You still with me here, Pen-pen?”

“Uhh, yeah?”

“Good, usually when someone loses their heart, their body splits up into two entities, a nobody and a heartless. The things you just saw now were normal, low-level dusks.”

“But why are they here, in the castle?” Why were they in my room?

“They take care of it,” Axel said matter-of-factly, “Who else do you think cleans up around the castle, me?”

A door suddenly swung open.

“Will you two shut up already?” Came an irritated voice from a young lady with blonde, practically golden, hair and teal eyes. She had a unique hairstyle, short cut with two stripes poking on top of her head, like little antennas. By definition, a wildly pretty, blue-eyed, blonde…soooo pretty.

“Our bad, didn’t mean to disturb you!” Apologized Penni, giving her a sorry look.

“Whatever, I’m already up now.” Her gaze focused on Penni, looking her up, then down. “New girl, right?”

“Penniton! But you can call me–”

She flicked Penni’s forehead. “I know, save it. You can call me Larxene, got that?” Larxene didn’t give the girl a chance to answer. “Don’t annoy me more than you already have and we’ll get along fine, kay’ newbie?”

She said that with an ill-ridden smile.

Penni didn't bother to say anything else, she simply nodded.

“Yikes Larxene,” ‘Crunch’ “no neef o be oo mean.” Axel commented with a mouthful of ice cream.

“It would be appreciated if you didn’t talk with food in your mouth, Axel.” Larxene peered at the redhead with disgust, “Anyways, a word of advice, you can’t rely on that keyblade of yours for everything. You know any magic?”

“Only blizzard, is there more I can learn?”

“Tons!” Axel exclaimed, holding a popsicle stick between his teeth. “You really gotta stop thinking so small.”

“That’s not terrible though, at least you know one spell, which means you’re not completely helpless.” Not completely helpless? That must count for something. “But- a couple of measly snowflakes won’t get you very far. Eventually, you’ll be in a situation where the magic you have now will be useless, and when that happens, you’ll crash and burn.”

She ended her sentence with a high, perky voice.

“Are you trying to scare her?” The redhead asked, raising an eyebrow at Larxene.

“I’m being realistic,” Larxene put her hands on both sides of Penni’s shoulder, smiling at her. “We don't want our little newbie dying on us too early.”

Penni swallowed a lump in her throat she didn’t even realize had formed. “So…where can I learn more magic? Can you teach me?”

“Yeah, no. I’m not your kindergarten teacher, that’s more Vexen’s speed.”

“Who-”

“You can find him in his lab or whatever, I’m sure he’ll be real pleased to meet you.” Larxene turned around, getting ready to disappear back into her room. She said to Penni without turning her head, “It was a nice talk, newbie.”

Axel and Penni watched as she walked back into her room, closing the door which one would say was a tad bit too hard. The two were silent for a moment, the girl then said, “Well, that was helpful of her.”

“She usually isn’t…” Axel said under his breath.

Penni let out a small yawn, signifying her growing tiredness, and even more tiredness to try and keep up a conversation. “I’ll see you later Axel,” She waved goodbye to the redhead before opening her door, her hand flinching away from the handle after feeling a small, electric shock.

She looked over her room once again, clicking her tongue once she saw her notebook left on the floor. Those nobodies- dusk- must’ve been messing with it. Penni picked up the book along with the white pencil and flopped down on the bed. Penni frowned when she saw a bunch a scribbles on the first few pages, there goes some priceless drawing space. Turning to a blank page, she began doodling some sketches of models wearing outfits, ideas of outfits.

“So…Neverland…” Penni wondered aloud, sketching a leafy, long dress. Decorated by earthy accessories, the dress itself, if she could color it, might’ve been green. A small stray pencil line caused her to turn the pencil over to its eraser, fixing her mistake.

Her mind drifted off, processing the events of the day. Then, she thought about her mom.

“How am I going to explain everything to her?”

Penni stared at the notebook page for a moment, her eyes lightening up for a second when an idea came to her. She turned to the next blank page, this time writing some letters in a neat font.

Dear Julia Bridges,

“...There’s no need to be so formal about it, it’s my mom.”

Dear Julia Bridges, Mom,

I’m not entirely sure how to explain this, but as of two days ago, your world our world disappeared along with you and everyone in it. Except for me and Veneta, but it’s okay, I’m gonna bring it back. You see, I ended up in a different world, (did you know there are hundreds upon thousands of other worlds out there? I can’t believe it either!) the only thing I had was this weird weapon called a keyblade, it looks exactly how it sounds. I don’t know exactly why I was given one or what I did to deserve being able to summon it, but it’s pretty useful for self defense against the growing darkness: Heartless. They’re nasty creatures that, as far as I’m aware, come in all different shapes and sizes, though I’ve only seen about three different kinds. The heartless are the reason our home disappeared in the first place.

Anyways, I met this guy named Xigbar (you would love him) who brought me to this castle to join this organization. It’s called Organization 13, but replaces the english numeral with the roman numeral (I can only count up to four in roman numerals). I’ll try to keep it short and simple, but Organization 13 is made up of people who don’t have hearts, they’re like zombies but without the undead part. They can’t feel emotions apparently, but I beg to differ. While I do have a heart, The leader (now my boss), Xemnas, said I can bring our world back by helping the organization complete ‘Kingdom Hearts’ (I’ll explain this later as I’m not exactly sure what it is myself, for now it’s just a big heart-shaped moon in the sky).

So yeah, I guess you could say I’m employed now. My comrades coworkers are nice enough, well, a majority of them all. I haven’t even met everyone there is in the organization yet. Besides Xigbar, there’s Axel, he has this wild red hair and a funny sense of humor (funnier than Xigbar), then there’s Demyx who despite my initial impression of him, is nice to have around. He’s kinda goofy too. Next is Saix, who I don’t think likes me very much. Which is fine! Not all coworkers have to like each other, just respect each other. As long as I don’t step on his toes too much I’m sure we’ll have a tolerable relationship.

The last two people I met today were Luxord and Larxene (notice how everyone has a ‘x’ in their name). I think Luxord likes to play cards, and Larxene is…nice. I’m not exactly sure what time it is right now, but all I know is that I’m super tired, that ‘C’ in gym class is finally catching up to me I guess, haha.

Guess I’ll finish this letter now, I’m ready to doze off. See you soon.

Love,

Penniton

Hopefully she really could see her soon.

The next day Penni managed to get up on a good time, albeit a bit sore.

Scratch that, very sore.

She was making her way down the white halls, massaging her arms when she was stopped by a friendly face.

“Penni, Saix wanted to see you personally in the other room, that way.” Axel told her, pointing down the hallway.

The girl blinked a few times, confused “Huh, why? Did I do something bad?”

“Nothing I can remember, maybe he just wants to talk to you.”

“I’m skeptical, but okay.” Penni walked further down the hallway, stopping in front of the two, big double doors. Her heart began to speed up and she swallowed a lump in her throat. She felt anxious.

“Deep breathes in…deep breathes out.” Just like her mom had taught her. Penni pushed the two doors open, stepping into a rather spacious room, with the familiar blue haired member waiting for her. “You wanted to see me?”

“Penniton,” Saix began to say, “Xemnas tasked me with the job of conducting an assessment on you today.”

The girl sighed out of relief. “What type of assessment, pen and paper?” She joked, though as she expected, the man was not amused in the slightest.

“This will be a test of the combat abilities you have thus far,” Saix explained plainly, summoning his claymore-like weapon by his side. What? Combat, against him? It looked so heavy that Penniton couldn’t even dream of being able to lift something like that off the ground, and in comparison to her keyblade…a fight with these conditions seemed a tad bit unfair.

“Hold on, I’ve barely even used my keyblade, nevertheless know how to properly wield it, I think it would be unfair to assess me right now when I’ve just started,” Penniton protested, there was no way she could win a fight like this.

“Unfair?” Saix’s cold voice almost came to a scoff.

“I-”

“There will be many times where you’ll have to take part in ‘unfair’ fights, do you really think your enemy would take into account whether a battle is impartial or not?” He moved into a readied position, “Take this as a lesson, Penniton, a lack of impartiality between you and your opponent is an advantage, depending on who the more prepared one is.”

Saix suddenly lunged at Penni, his claymore just missing her by the hairs of her head as she threw herself out of the way, her keyblade quickly materializing in her hand.

Right, so they were doing this.

To give him credit, the man was much faster with such a large weapon than the girl expected. In a second he was after her again, swing after swing leaving no time for Penni to even decide which direction to dodge next.

A choice was made for her, which ended up being the claymore knocking into her side, sending her flying, pummeling onto the hard floor. Fortunately, it was only the blunt edge of the weapon, but for someone like Penni, the double impact made her vision blur and her ears ring with noise.

The girl groaned and staggered on the ground for a short time. She struggled to pick herself up again, then she heard Saix speak once more.

“If this was a real fight, you would’ve died already. Get up.”

Despite her muscles aching and her mind muddled, she huffed, grabbing her fallen keyblade and getting back up on her feet to finish the fight.

Think faster, act faster, be faster.

Every duck, dodge, and side-step left Penni just a small ounce of time to try and find some sort of way to land an attack.

Yet every time she would find herself readying to strike, almost immediately she would be swept away to the floor, met by Saix’s chiding.

“You need to get up Penni,”

It felt harder to do so every time.

That’s when she had an idea.

As soon as he was in range enough, yelled out the words, “Blizzard!”

Cold, icy wind swept Saix’s view, creating a moment’s opening for her, and Penni took her chance.

She dashed towards the man, but before the metal of her blade could touch black material, Saix swooped under and side-swept her legs, knocking Penni clean off her balance.

She had been really getting to know the ground in the past couple of days, huh?

“Not only was that attack cheap, but you had sloppy execution as well. Being aware of your enemies’ actions at all times is a necessity, carelessness like that will-”

“Get me killed, I know.” Penni breathed out, rising up and wiping away the blood that formed on her nose.

“...So you're catching on.”

She continued to be knocked down again, and again, and again, each time feeling heavier than the last.

At one point when Saix charged at her again, Penni held her ground, using her keyblade to block the claymore, the mere strength caused the girl to be forced back by the mere strength of the sword.

Her keyblade was knocked far away from her, and she suddenly felt a kick to her stomach. Penni hissed in pain, tumbling down onto the floor for a final time. She made no effort to try and regain her stance.

“Are you giving up?”

She said nothing, her hands clutching her stomach and her body curled up. The girl flinched hard when she heard the loud ‘Twang!’ of the claymore that landed mere inches away from her head.

“That’s enough, I’ve seen all that I need to.” The weapon was de-summoned, and Saix's face looked more unimpressed than ever. “Your ability to wield the keyblade is subpar, you’ve disappointed me today, Penniton.”

Penni sat up on the floor, breathing heavily and struggling to form sentences in between recuperating, “I wasn’t-”

“If you couldn’t land a single hit on me, how do you expect to survive in a real situation, dodge attacks until someone comes and saves you? You’re showing signs of cowardice.”

“I didn’t have time to think-”

“You’ll rarely have time to think, and excuses won’t change anything. You need to utilize your keyblade more, not throw around the same measly spell-”

“How can I be any good at my job if I barely know how to use my keyblade?” Penni argued, her face beginning to fume in frustration and her voice rising. Her fists clenched as she kept going, “I’ve hardly been a part of the organization for a full three days, and I’m the only one in it with a keyblade. So figuring it out, mind you, by myself- isn’t gonna click automatically!”

Saix didn’t say anything yet his face was cold as always, his eyes piercing through Penni. “I doubt you got to swinging around that oversized sword of yours right off the bat, I need time to learn- not just a couple of days!” She took a deep breath, her eyebrows lowering. “What do you want me to do Saix, because I just don’t know.”

“What happens to you is inconsequential to me, and every member couldn't be more unconcerned about your welfare than they already are,” Saix finally spat out, irritation sprawled out on his face. “You should be fortunate you get to wear that coat of yours in the first place, nevertheless have the title of being a member.” Penniton's eyes widened as Saix’s words seeped into her like venom. “If you really want to be treated with the same respect as everyone else, I suggest you learn to fend for yourself and manage your problems on your own.” The blue-haired man didn’t even spare Penniton a second glance, leaving her alone in the room.

By herself, alone, again.

By herself, with no one around to comfort her.

Water prickled at the edges of her eyes, tears threatening to fall. Penni tried her best to wipe them away, now wasn’t the time to cry.

“Fend for myself…” Penni muttered, summoning her keyblade, watching how the light reflected and bounced off of it. She chuckled slightly, pitying herself and her own predicament. “I guess…you're on your own Penni.”

Her eyes felt heavy and the burning sensation of her body didn’t help with her immense fatigue. It felt like she just had the butt-kicking of a lifetime so…one quick nap…wouldn’t hurt.

Penniton promptly passed out on the floor.

#kingdom hearts #fanfic #kingdom hearts fanfiction #kh fanfiction #ao3 #non canon compliant #OC #oc fiction #writers on tumblr #writing #Back:drop #peaches writes

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cannedpeachesxp · 11 months

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Back:drop (Part II)

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Quick Summary: In which Penniton finds herself in a new situation, as well as a new resolve.

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Penniton felt something in her heart break as she watched everything around her disappear into the darkness. Was she going to disappear too?

Penni didn’t want to disappear, she couldn’t.

It felt unfair, it was unfair.

Penni felt a burning sensation in her chest as her initial shock subsided and a multitude of emotions hit her correspondent to a heavyweight. Sadness, confusion, desperation, it was as if she was feeling all of those at once. But one felt stronger than the rest, it gave her a sort of high feeling, it gave her the kind of willingness to hang on. She gripped onto the emotion like if she let it go she would disappear with it.

Moments later, Penni felt the rest of her senses coming back to her as her shoes touched solid ground.

Solid ground? Penni looked down to see a stained glass floor, all integrated into a pattern that revealed it to be one large, circular mosaic. She cocked her head, taking a few steps on the platform. She traced the image with her finger, trying to get a scope of the big picture. It looked close to a night sky, the first thing that caught Penni’s eye was the girl in front of the moon, poised to copy the crescent shape of it. She had caramel skin and magenta eyes accompanied by round, golden-colored glasses. Big, curly, brown hair and a familiar outfit, parallel to one of the designs from her sketchbook, the same one Veneta looked at that night. It was Penniton, right down to the light freckles that painted her body.

In the image, Penni’s eyes were closed shut, like she was sleeping. Yet, she looked far from peaceful. Akin to how Penni was feeling right now.

She traced the image further, and it became apparent that there was another part of the mosaic, a much smaller circle with the background of a sun with a great blue sky behind it. There was also a girl in that circle, too. She was reaching out to Penni- or letting go, Penni thought the latter. This girl had long, slightly messy, yellow hair that faded into an orange-red. Almost like a sunset. Her eyes were emerald green and she also had a uniform similar to Penni. Everything about her was unmistakably recognizable.

No wonder Penni’s glass counterpart looked so upset.

They both had oddly shaped blades held in their hands, Veneta’s being in the shape of a sun blocked out by the moon while Penni was close to the opposite, a crescent moon.

Penni’s eyes wandered off to the other side of the art piece. There, she saw her mom, along with Mason, Mandy, and Mr. Guss, and surprisingly even a portrait of the hooded man was scattered in the stars of her mosaic.

While looking at the faces of those close to her, her eyes wandered back to Veneta, that burning feeling in her chest again as her breath became heavy and her fist clenched. Tears began to well up in her eyes and she forcefully stomped on the glass, like that only would be enough force to break it. Maybe if she glared at the image enough it would shatter. The sheer imagery of Veneta was enough to make Penni want to scream. She dropped to her knees and slammed her fists onto the glass, when that didn’t do anything she just began to hit harder. She wanted to throw something at the image, anything. She wanted her to pay, wanted her to suffer. Penni raised both her hands up in the air, getting ready to hit the mosaic as hard as she could. When she brought her hands down, a loud, metallic ‘crash!’ echoed out as the object in Penni’s hands hit the ground and made contact with the glass, causing a crack to form in it.

Penni gasped in surprise and was quick to drop whatever materialized in her hands, scrambling to get up. On the floor was a large key-looking thing, similar to the one Veneta had. Penni looked at it hesitantly, reaching her hand out to pick it up by the handle. The key’s outer handle was in the shape of a crescent moon, and at the end was a keychain with a star attached to the bottom. It was light and sharp, fitting Penni’s hand perfectly like it was made for her.

Her gaze on the key object broke when her focus turned to the crack in the glass, it looked as if darkness was seeping out from it, breaking through the cracks. That couldn’t be good. The infamous black creatures from earlier rose from the ground, forming from it.

They wiggled around, writhing, and phased into the floor like a liquid, zipping all around. One of them popped right out of the hole and just, stared at her for a moment. Penni locked eyes with it and froze. She couldn’t move under the gaze of that creature.

Those terrifying little bugs took away everything. Her life, her friend, her, her mom. Her world.

And suddenly, the anger came back. Penni pushed back her tears and gripped the perfectly tethered handle, swinging it at those despicable things. If she was going to join everything she knew then she was going to go out fighting.

But another part of her, a stronger part of her, fought to see Veneta again. So that she could tear that traitor apart, and simply find out, why?

One swing and the thing disappeared, the others were now aware of her and her destructive blade, her anger, her darkness. Her saddened and muted light.

She kept swinging, the question repeating in her mind as she let out her tears. Why, why, why…

It repeated with each swing of the blade until there were no more, and when there were no more she continued to try and smash a hole into the glass below her. Wanting more creatures, wanting more revenge. Wanting more, something.

Penni screamed into the air, frustration taking over her entire being. Her chest hurt and she could feel the pain of her heart ripping apart, but her mind just kept coming back to Veneta.

That traitor.

If only Penni had known this was what she was like sooner, she wouldn’t have wasted so long of her life on that disloyal ex-friend. The worst part is, Penni would have never known about that if this hadn’t happened.

It’s all her fault. She ruined everything. Took away everything with those dark creatures. Everything could’ve been okay now. They’d be having an all-nighter, a slumber party after the festival right now, telling stories. Instead, here Penniton was, alone and miserable.

Revenge. Penniton wanted revenge.

The crack in the glass began to expand, shattering right under Penni’s feet. She shrieked as she fell for the second time that day. Her body was welcomed by the darkness as she fell into the abyss.

‘Gasp!’ Penni sat up, inhaling sharply as her hand gripped her chest tightly, her whole body shaking. The girl hastily looked around, where was she?

Penni took a minute to catch her breath, picking herself up off the ground once she did. The girl lurked around her new surroundings, staying high with alert with each step she took, but there wasn’t much to look out for, everything in this new setting was bare. It appeared to be a whole city but there wasn’t a person in sight. Bright signs and lights lit up the whole place but no citizens, cars, or your normal metropolitan sounds to go with it. That’s what probably scared Penni the most about this place though, being somewhere so big but so desolate, it put her on edge.

She had so many questions, so many thoughts that circled her mind. What was she even supposed to do, where should she go? Penni inhaled deeply in an attempt to control her breathing, running her hands through her curly hair. She just had to stay calm and assess the situation.

Penni pondered momentarily before letting out an ‘oh!’ and stuck out her hand, a slight look of relief on her face as she felt the weapon materialize in her palm. At least if she got into trouble, she could protect herself with this. Penni continued walking aimlessly down the dark street, she’ll find someone or something that’ll help-

“Hey, kid-” Penni shrieked at the feeling of a hand being placed on her shoulder, in a blink of an eye she jumped back, and a ‘clang!’ echoed throughout the area as her key was caught mid-swing by a familiar, black mitt.

“Woah, woah- slow down there kid!” The hooded man said, keeping a cemented grip on Penni’s key.

“It’s…only you…thank goodness,” Penni breathed out, her initial panic subsiding as relief ran through her, glad to see somewhat of a familiar face. The man’s focus seemed to flicker over to the key briefly as he mumbled out the question,

“Since when did you have a keyblade?” seemingly confused. Is that what it’s called, a ‘keyblade’?

The man let go of the keyblade as it fumbled out of Penni’s hands, clattering onto the ground, dissolving as if it was never there in the first place. Her hands were really shaky, the whole situation still had her a bit stunned.

The man flipped off his hood, his full-face visible to Penni for the first time. His yellow eye was clear as day, just as abnormal as when Penni got a hint of it during their first encounter. His other eye was covered with a black patch and a semi-large scar that ran up from his chin. His hair was tied up in a long ponytail, white streaks and all.

Penni let out a subtle ‘Woah’ as the man peered down at Penni, like he was looking for something.

“What are you doing here?” The man asked, a muddled expression on his face. Penni shrugged her shoulders, grimacing a bit as her eyes traveled down to the floor.

Penniton fiddled with her hands for a moment as she recalled what had happened until now, how would she even start to explain?

“I don't really know…everything around me dissolved into this weird darkness.” Penni explained in a low voice, “I think I blacked out. It kinda felt like I was dead, but there was a powerful, burning feeling that I focused on.” Penni pressed her hand to her chest, reminiscing the outlandish sensation. “And before I knew it, I was here.”

“And that friend of yours?” The man asked, Penni’s eyebrow twitched slightly. She shook her head solemnly.

The man’s mouth curved downward into a half-frown while he ran a hand through his hair. For a short time, he was silent, like he was pondering the following words.

“I hate to say this kid, but your world is gone.” Penni searched for the usual sarcasm in his voice, but she found nothing. She let out a chuckle of disbelief.

“You're joking, right? A whole world can’t just disappear like that.” Penni stated factually, but the sentence was more reassuring to herself.

“You can tell yourself that all you want but I’m telling you, there’s nothing left.” The man said in a matter-of-factly tone. Penni’s breathing hitched as she put her hand over her mouth, a look of perturbation befalling her face. So it was true? Everything was gone?

“God,” Penni dropped her head in her hands.

Her school, every teacher or student she’s gotten to know was gone. She would never step foot in Mr. Guss’ shop again, never hear the question ‘How was your day Penniton?’. And the twins, Mandy and Mason. Penni didn’t even want to contemplate it.

She felt herself tear up at the thought of what happened to her mom, looks like she wouldn’t be riding the train home to her at all.

The man sighed, “Okay, kid, tell you what? If you and that sparkly new Keyblade of yours are willing, I might know a place you could go, for a little while.”

Penni lifted her head up, staring at him hesitantly for a short time, gently reminding him “But…I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Xigbar,” Xigbar answered. Was that his actual name? Huh. Weird name for a weird guy, at least that's what Penni guessed. “Now, are you going to tell me yours or am I going to have to keep calling you ‘kid’?”

“Penniton, but just say ‘Penni’ for short,” Penni explained, he gave out a snicker as if he was trying to hold in a large laugh. “What’s so funny?” She asked, squinting at the man.

“That’s your name?” Xigbar chortled, “Penniton?” The girl huffed, rolling her eyes rather sassily.

“It's not like the name ‘Xigbar’ is anything special.” Penni retorted, her eyebrows furrowing.

“Alright, alright, calm down firecracker,” Xigbar said, grinning. Wait, ‘firecracker’? Penni opened her mouth to protest against the new nickname but the man outstretched his hands to hers. “Are you coming or not?”

Penni circled around the idea for a bit, it’s not like she had much of a choice, what else was she supposed to do? Moreover, at this point, what else did she have to lose? Penni also had a feeling that the worst this guy could do to her was give her another bad nickname. She took the man’s gloved hand.,

“Where are we even going?” A weird noise went through Penni’s ears as a portal-looking thing spawned in front of the two. An expression of concern rose on Penni’s face as she looked at the portal. “Is that…safe?”

For me, it is. For you?” Xigbar paused- then gave a lazy shrug of the shoulders, “...Guess we’ll find out.”

Well, that’s not terrifying at all. But really, what did Penniton have left to lose?

It was only a few seconds, maybe ten, max. But for those ten seconds, it felt like Penni’s breath was being taken away, slowly but surely. By the time the two were out the other side, Penni gasped, a light-headed feeling washing over her.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, you came out in one piece.” Xigbar commented, Penni was less than amused. She surveyed her surroundings, and the first thing she noticed was the lack of color, only a cool white filling her view. It definitely felt castle-y, just the absence of all life, like an unfinished picture.

“Xigbar,” Came a low voice from behind the two, Penni saw the slightly annoyed expression on the eyepatch man’s face before he turned towards the direction of the voice.

It was another coat-wearing male, he seemed younger than Xigbar, with long blue hair and soul-piercing yellow eyes. His expression was cold and distant. One thing that really stood out to Penni though was the ‘x’ shaped scar on the bridge of his nose, it was scary enough to match his already menacing aura.

“You already know that’s mandatory to report back to me after every mission-“ He stopped mid-sentence when he noticed Penni’s presence next to Xigbar. He looked kinda disgusted, his eyes narrowing at Penni.

“Surprise,” Xigbar said with obvious sarcasm in his voice, waving his hands in the air slightly. Saix didn’t seem that impressed as his eyes shifted to him and then back to Penni. He went silent for a short time, it was hard to tell exactly what he was thinking since his face barely shifted, but it could’ve been guessed that he was contemplating what words were going to come out of his mouth.

“...Why?” He asked in a slightly questioning voice.

“Well, that isn’t exactly your business, is it?” Xigbar nonchalantly shrugged Saix off, slightly pushing Penni forward as a sign to start walking, and honestly, she couldn’t be happier to end the conversation. She had this gut feeling this ‘Saix’ guy wasn’t exactly pleased with her presence.

“Xigbar,” Saix stated, causing the eyepatch man to stop in his tracks. “I demand an explanation.”

“Calm down moon man, you’ll find out soon enough.” He said, continuing on his merry way, the heels of his boots tapping on the ground as Penni shuffled up behind him. When she felt far away enough down the hall, Penni shifted her head to the side, looking back behind her to catch another glimpse of the blue-haired character. The girl was very quick to whip her head back around when she saw piercing yellow eyes staring back at her.

Penni got the weird feeling that he wasn't that fond of her

The two walked along several more hallways, all of them being the same white color pallet, one after the other. During their walk, a thought came across Penni’s mind. Both Xigbar and Saix were wearing the same black coat and both had the same yellow eyes. Additionally, assuming there were other people besides them in the castle, did everyone have the same similar look to them?

Penni cocked her eyebrow, was this some sort of weird cult?

“Stay put kiddo,” Xigbar lightly said, almost mumbling as he slipped inside a different room through two large white double doors. Penni didn’t even realize the sudden stop they came to.

“M’kay…” The girl replied though he was already out of the room. Penni stood in the empty hallway rather awkwardly, twiddling her fingers while staring at the clean, marble-like floors. It was quiet, except for the muffled voices coming from the door.

Now, Penni wasn’t the type of person to eavesdrop on others' private conversations, but this was different. She slightly scooted closer to the door, leaning her head to the door in an attempt to hear the tiniest snippet of conversation. She didn’t really get much out of it, though Penni swore she heard the word ‘Keyblade’ get thrown around more than once.

“Well, you're a new face.” A new voice came from the side of Penni, the girl quickly whipped around to face the unfamiliar figure, putting her arms behind her back to appear innocent of any attempted eavesdropping.

“Don’t mind me! I’m just waiting for- oh.” Penni’s words trailed off at the slightly surprising sight of the owner of the voice. He had a rather extreme red hairstyle in the shape of downward-facing spikes. His eyes were teal and he had two purple tear-shaped tattoos (or what Penni assumed were tattoos) below them. And what did you know, the redhead was also wearing a black coat.

“Oh? What, is there something on my face?” The redhead joked, pretending to look offended.

“No- I didn’t mean to be rude!” Penni quickly explained in a worried voice. “I was just a bit startled, that’s all.” She mumbled, slightly scratching the back of her head and her eyes drifting away from embarrassment. Where were her manners?

“Don’t sweat it, Penniton.” He said in almost a slight chuckle.

Penni let out a ‘huh’ at the sound of her name being said by the stranger, she quickly began to ask “How do you know my…” The redhead silently pointed to the door, leaning his head towards it more so he could hear a little better, raising his gloved hand to his ear.

“So I was right about the name then.”

“Well, you can just call me Penni for short.”

“In that case, you can call me the Flurry of Dancing Flames- or Axel, for short.” Axel joked, a grin cracking on his face, and to be frank, Penni couldn’t hide the small giggle that came out of her mouth caused by the overly bizarre title. What did it even mean? Maybe it had something to do with his fiery red hair, probably.

“You must be what Saix is so pressed about,” he snorted, as if trying to hold back a laugh, “You’ve got him in quite the tizzy.”

Penni shrunk in on herself, but she suddenly felt his hand come down heavily on her shoulder, “it’s hilarious. Got that memorized?”

If she didn’t know any better, it would seem like this tall —redwood— tree of a man was trying to comfort her.

Because really, he had no reason to. After all, she and him just met, just learned each other’s names.

Was it that he was being nice out of pity? Pity over how lost Penni was in her bizarre predicament, resorting to putting blind trust in some eyepatch-wearing man in a shady coat. Not only that, but she already managed to piss someone off just by her presence, like she was some sort of intruder.

She would hate that if it was the case. If he was being nice out of pity.

“Yeah, I think I do.” Penni lightly chuckled, leaning against the wall. Well, while she was here, maybe she could get some of her questions answered. “If you don’t mind me asking Axel, what is this place?” That was the first question that came to Penni’s head, she had a lot more than that though.

“Well for starters, you’re in the World That Never Was, and you're standing in Organization XIII’s Homebase,” Axel explained rather nonchalantly. Blatant confusion was written all over Penni’s face. But when she thought about it, that was what Xigbar had been saying.

Her world was gone, and she had ended up in an entirely different one.

“You’re saying that this really is a different world?”

“Of course. Let me guess, you’ve been living on the same little world your entire life.” Axel hypothesized, Penni nodded. Up until a few hours ago, her home was the only ‘world’ she’s ever known.

“Well, there are tons of worlds out there, some big and small, like this one. Some are closer to your homeworld, full of humans, right?” He asked the question but didn’t wait for Penni’s response. “What’s more is that there are some full of animals, or mermaids, fairies, sometimes they’re just filled with nothing.” He shrugged. “Got it memorized?”

“Yeah, but- that’s so bizarre, how come I never knew about them, like, a long time ago?” Penni asked, they didn’t exactly teach about different worlds in school.

“Well, that’s because of a little something called ‘World Order’.”

Penniton tilted her head, and her interest peaked. Despite this resembling an exposition dump, she wanted him to continue. The thought of new worlds outside the minuscule one she’d known was fascinating. Was there a world entirely underwater? Was the moon a world? Was there a world full of fashion designers?

For a brief moment, Penni hoped so. That would be fun. But the fond memories associated with that caused a sharp, numbing pain to shoot through her chest. She sucked in her lips, shaking the feeling off. It would be better off if she just forgot about it.

“Pretty much what the Order entails is that you shouldn’t let others know you are from another world when visiting their world.” Axel continued explaining. That made sense why Xigbar was so insistent on dropping as few details as possible when Penni had first met him. Yet it still left her questioning a few things, for starters, why was the order so important in the first place? Would it really be bad if everyone knew about the other worlds?

“If you don’t mind me asking, you said something about there being an organization, what’s that about?” That was probably the most important question Penni had, she had a feeling this ‘organization’ went hand in hand with the fact that every person she met there had a black coat on.

“That is a question you can ask Xemnas yourself,” The infamous and ever so sarcastic voice of Xigbar said, seemingly coming out of nowhere to Penni, how did she not notice him slip back out the door? If she wasn’t mildly used to him popping from nowhere she would’ve jumped.

Before Penni could even ask the question ‘Who’s Xemnas?’, Xigbar pointed back to the door, simply stating with a smirk, “Your turn.”

“Wait, by myself?” Penni looked concerned, not that she couldn’t do it by herself, but the name ‘Xemnas’ just sounded kinda scary.

“Don’t worry about it Penni, you’ll be fine,” Axel reassured, but Penni swore he heard him hold back a giggle.

“Well, don’t keep bossman waiting now,” Xigbar said, motioning Penni forward. She exhaled deeply, opening the doors in front of her, and slipping into the room. Slightly flinching after promptly feeling them shut behind her.

She walked several steps forward, not noting much about the room itself since there wasn’t anything to comment about. It was the same white color scheme in a big room. What drew Penni’s attention the most was the man that stood in the middle of the room, looking out a wall window into the dark night sky. He had long, mid-back silver hair that was layered and slightly messy. Then, of course, he had a black coat on. He must be Xemnas.

Xemnas was facing away from Penni, seemingly in deep thought. Not that deep though, as he could still clearly sense her presence.

“Penniton.” The silver-haired man said in a deep and commanding voice, yet there was a calm tone to it. He turned himself around to look at her, and that’s when Penni saw the similar unnatural yellow eyes, the same color eyes Xigbar had. The man began to walk toward Penni, stopping only a few feet away from her, staring her down for a moment. “I sense darkness in your heart,” He began. Darkness in her heart? What was he talking about? “I wonder why that is.” It didn’t seem that he expected her to answer.

Maybe it was something about his cold demeanor or the way his eyes stared right through her, but he struck an unknown fear in Penni, the type of fear that made her want to just disappear right then and there.

“Your world,” Xemnas started, Penni hoped she wasn’t going to hear the words she thought she was going to hear. “Is gone.”

That was the final confirmation for Penniton, it really was gone. She pursed her lips together, her gaze drifted onto the white floor as she gave a slow nod. Penni felt almost nauseous, her eyes beginning to feel the slightest bit watery, but she held herself together, taking a deep breath, then looking back up at the man in front of her.

“It has succumbed to darkness, alongside many, many other worlds. You should feel lucky you didn’t disappear with it, miraculously.”

“But…I feel like I was supposed to.” Penniton quietly thought aloud, almost in a whisper, just loud enough that Xemnas could hear.

“Oh? And why is that?”

“I was in a dark place, it felt like my body was vanishing in a matter of minutes. I was scared and confused, but then I felt something really strong. A powerful feeling that I held onto that made me feel whole again.”

“And what was that feeling?”

Penniton opened her mouth, but she hesitated to say what she was thinking.

“…Revenge. I’ve been wronged by someone I thought I could trust, she turned her back on me and left me to oblivion. I want her to pay the price for it.” When Penniton spoke she felt the familiar sensation in her chest, it was warm, but not in a comforting way. Though it made her feel more composed, like she could hold herself together.

Xemnas nodded, concluding, “You need to hold onto that feeling further, let it bolster, for it's the only thing keeping your heart as well as your existence from ceasing.” Penni’s eyes went wide at his words, he couldn’t be serious.

“Hearts, Penniton, are a fragile and complex thing, they can hold so much but change so frequently. Your heart, in particular, is broken. The only thing holding it together is the prominent need to achieve the closure you seek. Letting go of that feeling would be releasing the thing keeping you alive.”

Penniton wanted to say something like, ‘You can’t be serious?’ but felt as if it would be too rude to address a man such as him that way, so she remained in silent disbelief, her hands grasping onto her now ruffled school cardigan tightly. Hearts…hearts…hearts…were they really that special? That important? Has everyone always relied on hearts as their life source? They didn’t exactly teach the subject of hearts in boarding school.

And why her heart? When did it become ‘broken’?

“Then, what am I supposed to do?” Penni asked, what can she do? “Am I just supposed to hold onto that feeling forever?” What comes next?

Xemnas didn’t respond, instead, he turned back around, his feet guiding him back to the wall window where he first stood when Penni had entered the room. Penni instinctively followed close behind him, albeit with drag.

“Look up at the sky, Penniton. Do you see that?” Xemnas said, turning the girl’s attention to the dark sky, a small gasp escaped her mouth. There, bright light reflecting off her magenta eyes, stood what seemed to be an enormous heart-shaped moon in the sky; she could probably match the outline by curving her hands. How did she not notice that earlier?

“That is Kingdom Hearts,” Xemnas continued “the gathering place of all hearts this life has to offer.”

Maybe that explains the shape, Penni thought.

“Right now Kingdom Hearts remains incomplete, but that’s what this organization, Organization XIII, works towards, and only then will we all become whole again.”

“Whole?”

“Every member of the organization is a nobody, a shell of who they used to be, removed and devoid of the heart, and in extension, their emotions. Anything left of our feelings is made up from distant memories.”

No emotions? Penniton didn’t really buy it, because in that case, Xigbar and Axel- they were really good actors.

Penniton made her judgment unknown to Xemnas.

“To complete Kingdom Hearts, we collect hearts from the heartless, creatures born from the darkness of one’s hearts. They seek out more hearts to consume, plaguing various worlds of their light until there’s nothing left.”

Similar to what Xigbar said during that fateful encounter, Penniton reminisced on his words for a short moment.

“They never truly die, and they’ll keep coming back, again and again, and again until there’s nothing to come back to.”

“The organization on its own cannot exterminate the heartless and collect the heart, we don’t have the ability to do so. But the keyblade does.”

“You mean- my keyblade?” Penni wondered, pointing to herself curiously. She was returned a nod.

Now, both of them were standing side by side, looking out the windows at the heart-shaped object in the sky. Xemnas put his hand behind his back and resumed his monologue.

“With the completion of kingdom hearts, not only will our hearts be restored, but the fallen worlds will be restored as well.”

Penniton's head snapped towards the man, and her eyes widened.

“R…really?” Her voice almost came out in a quiet mumble, strings of disbelief sewn into it. Was it possible? Could she really fix everything?

Something materialized in Xemnas’ hands in a puff of a dark purplish essence, it was a neatly folded-up black coat.

“Your place can be with the Organization if you so choose, Penniton.”

Penniton looked down at the coat, an overwhelming feeling of hope in her heart.

She was going to fix everything.

“So, a new organization member,” Axel thought aloud, one hand on his hip as his steps echoed down the hallway, all while meager, quieter steps followed after him. “You must be a pretty special case Penni, usually only nobodies get to join.”

Right now, Axel was showing Penni to her room for her indefinite stay. She didn’t see Xigbar anywhere after finishing her rather enlightening talk with Xemnas, but she had a hunch he would pop up again soon.

“About that, does everyone in the organization really not have a heart?” Penni asked skeptically, holding the bundled-up black coat in her arms while also balancing a pair of matching black boots and gloves.

“What, you didn’t believe Xemnas?” Axel stopped, his eyes glancing at Penni. She slowly shook her head.

“Not really, it’s just too bizarre for me to fully believe.” Akin to what she thought earlier, really good actors.

“Well, I can prove it.” The redhead claimed before putting his hand out, pointing to his wrist where the pulse would be. Hesitantly, Penni put two fingers on his wrist, waiting to hear the bump of a heartbeat.

Two seconds passed.

Four seconds passed.

Six seconds…

Eight…

Ten.

“Oh.” Penni breathed out, an unknown expression on her face as she suddenly started walking ahead of Axel. “Sorry, I don’t talk to zombies.”

“Rude! I’m not even a zombie, I’m a ‘nobody’.” Axel retorted, catching up to Penni.

“No need for the self-depreciation, Flame boy.”

He scoffed.

“You really are a riot Penni, I sure hope we get partnered up for missions.” The redhead commented, not really thinking much of it.

That was right, missions.

“Hey Axel, what are the missions like?” Penni asked out of curiosity. In reality, Penni had no idea what she’d be doing besides whacking around her keyblade, which she really didn’t know how to use that well.

“Another question? Jeez, Penni, you're such a chatterbox.” Axel jokingly stated, he continued, not leaving the girl had the chance to say anything else. “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow when Saix gives you your first mission in the Grey Area, he’ll explain everything you need to know then.” Penni let out an unsatisfied groan, the mention of the name giving her a small sense of dread.

It’s amazing how you can never exchange a single word with a person but still have such an immense disdain for their presence.

“Don’t get so gloomy, you’ll have to get used to Saix if you wanna survive sticking with the Organization.” Axel reminded her, “Besides, it’s funny seeing him get worked up just because of one little girl with a keyblade.”

“...Little?”

“Anyways-”

“At least my hair can’t get mistaken for a forest fire.” She retorted, a gasp came from Axel.

“You're just jealous, not everyone is born with magnificent hair like mine!”

“Yeah, right.” Penni attempted to hold back the laugh that came with her sentence, but she had no free hands to cover her mouth with.

The two then stopped in front of a white door, Axel opening it to Penni to reveal a very plain, modest room. There was no more than a desk with a chair, plus a bed. One could call it cozy if it didn’t seem so cold.

“Not very welcoming…” The girl muttered, clear disappointment on her face. Stepping into the room to further inspect it. Her eyes caught two objects laid out on the desk, a notebook as well as a writing utensil. Penni absentmindedly picked up the book, flipping through the blank white pages. “What’s this for?”

“Everyone gets that, it’s simply what it is, a notebook.” Axel broadly explained, leaning on the doorframe. “Think of it as…a courtesy gift. Write anything you want in it, it’s yours to do whatever with it.”

“What did you write in yours?”

“Me?” An eyebrow ever so slightly became arched, like he was surprised Penni asked such a question. He shrugged in response, “Didn’t write in mine, had no reason to so I never did.”

“Ah,” Penni laid the notebook back down, resuming her observation of the room. The next thing her eyes shifted themselves to was outside the window above the bed. A dark and quite frankly unsettling night sky. This sky was much different than the glimmering star-filled one back home, that sky felt full of life. This one felt devoid of any.

“If that’s all, I think I’ll head back to my own room.” The redhead put his hand on the door handle, ready to take his leave. “Have a nice night Penni.” He said, raising a hand, and shooting Penni a lazy smile, lightly shutting the door on his way out.

“Night…” Replied Penni, though he had already left the room. The girl inhaled a deep breath, taking off her glasses to massage the bridge of her nose. She paused though when she noticed the several cracks and scratches in the lenses of her brass-colored glasses. So much had been going on she’d barely noticed the damage her glasses had taken earlier, what's worse was the fact she had them on the whole time. Penni’s eyes narrowed as she set the glasses down on the desk, noting that she would have to get them fixed later, somehow.

In that moment, Penni went from standing up, to her legs promptly guiding her over to the corner bed, her body collapsing on the soft sheets. She had finally, completely let her guard down, and it felt like all emotions that made her vulnerable hit her in one single blow, leaving her with an exhausted feeling. “Yeah…” She thought aloud, pulling the covers over her body. “I need some sleep.” And that was the last thought she had, becoming lulled into a slumber only by the eerie silence of the room.

By the time Penni regained consciousness she assumed a few things. One, she was asleep long enough that it was the next day- even though she couldn’t tell back looking out the window, she had a feeling. Secondly, she would start her “missions” today and finally dawn her new black uniform. Though, a thought- or more of a realization- came across Penni’s head. Axel never told Penni a time when to wake up.

…

“Axel never gave me a time to wake up!” Yelped Penni in distress as she shot up in her bed- her eyes blown wide open. She clumsily fumbled out of the sheets she was entangled with, hurriedly grabbing her uniform she haphazardly placed on the desk the night prior, switching her current clothes with it. “For all I know, I could be late right now- I’m probably late already!” She stressed, throwing on her black boots which to her, were quite stylish in their own merit, that’s the impression Penni had when she gave herself a quick look over. The girl had different opinions when it came to the coat, she would’ve appreciated something slightly shorter, the extra material felt as if it was going to slow her down. Maybe if she got her hands on a mini sewing kit she could shorten it a bit…wait, wait! She had to stay focused!

Penni threw her door open, rushing down the hallways as her mind raced a mile a minute, the sound of her boots clicking on the ground following her. Way to go Penniton, nothing like being unprepared on the first day. Where was she supposed to go again to receive her missions?

“Why don’t you wait until tomorrow when Saix gives you your first mission in the Grey Area, he’ll explain everything you need to know then.”

Right, the Grey Area…wherever that was, Penni should’ve asked Axel more questions. It would be a bit pesky of her, sure, but at least she would know where to go then. Well, Penni was sure she would know what the Grey Area looked like when she got there, and this was a good chance to get herself familiarized with the castle’s interior. But, later on, she should try to acquaint herself with all the organization members, there are thirteen of them, right? She already had met four of them, that way she wouldn’t have to keep bugging Axel with her inquiries.

Axel, Xigbar, Saix, Xemnas…hey, all of those names had the letter ‘X’ in them, Penni wondered what the reason was behind that trend. Penni snapped out of her train of thought once she saw that she was approaching the end of the pasty white hallway, her steps coming to a slow pace as she entered the large, open room. Glancing around quickly she saw that the room was some sort of wedged-shaped lounge, several couches and tables spread about and one large wall made entirely of windows. Could this be the Grey Area?

Penni didn’t have time to make any assumptions, because in that moment a slightly loud ‘Ahem’ grabbed her attention, she looked over to one of the couches where she saw a dreadfully recognizable, blue-haired member sitting crossed-legged while looking through papers.

“Penniton,” Saix grunted in a stale voice, “you’re early.”

Early? Looking around, Penni did see only her and Saix in the room, so that made sense.

“I’m glad, and here I was thinking I was late,” Penni joked with relief washing over her, though Saix didn’t seem all that amused, simply making a short “hm” noise, returning his attention back down to his papers. Penni awkwardly stood in place, trying to think of what to say next, unaware of the fidgeting of her hands and how they were playing around with the metal chains of her coat, creating a persistent clinking noise.

“Could you cut that out? The sound is irritating.” Saix huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his gloved hands.

“Sorry! My bad.” Penni quickly apologized, putting both her hands down. She took a deep breath, then asked her question, “I wanted to ask you, what exactly are the missions like?”

“I thought this was explained already,” Saix sighed heavily, replying to Penni with hostility, “collect hearts.”

“I mean-” Penni held back an irked sigh “I know that but what’s gonna happen.”

The blue-haired member closed his eyes for a moment, finally answering Penni’s question after she had to pry it out of him. “It’s standard that missions are solo, partnered ones being few and far in between…but since you are a new member, for your first few assignments you will be paired up with someone else. Think of them as your advisor, they’ll provide mentoring and assist you throughout your mission.” Penni nodded as he explained all of this.

“In that case, who’s gonna be my partner?” Saix shifted through his papers for a moment, bluntly stating a name without even batting an eye at Penni, “Demyx.”

“Who’s-”

“Morning,” Came a chirpy voice as a member with dirty blonde hair and probably the most impressive mullet Penni has ever seen strut into the room with a slight drag of his feet. And much like all the other organization members, Penni has met thus far, he was much taller than her. He let out a loud yawn as if he had just woken up. He rubbed his tired cyan eyes, squinting while he scanned the room, slightly puzzled. “Aah…am I early?”

“Yes, but since you and your partner are here already, you may as well get along with your mission,” Saix said, getting up from the couch.

“Part…ner?” He mumbled seemingly still out of it, he finally looked over to Penn and his eyes widened as if everything suddenly clicked. “Ohhh, you’re the new girl!”

Penni gave a weak laugh, “You can call me Penni, I'm guessing you must be-,”

“Demyx,” He smiled at her, outstretching a fist. The girl was lost at the straightforwardness. Was he being serious? The thought of pity went through Penni’s mind again. A voice spoke up again and she didn’t have a chance to return the fist..

“Ahem,” The two turned their attention to an apathetic Saix. “You are both being assigned to Neverland. Demyx, since Penniton is unable to summon her own dark corridors, you are responsible for getting the both of you there and back.” He narrowed his eyes, “To put it in simple terms, there has been a rising infestation of heartless, all you have to do is cut down the numbers and collect the hearts.” Cut down the numbers, and collect hearts. Got it. “Remember to both remain focused on your objectives, then report back to me once you’ve finished.”

Demyx gave Saix a thumbs up plus a ‘You got it boss’ then summoned a corridor, giving Penni zero prep time or a forewarning as Demyx quickly pulled the both of them through it.

Going through the dark, murky portal was easier this time around, Penni didn’t feel like she had to hold her breath and she didn’t feel the invisible force clawing at her. The coat dressed over her body gave her a sense of comfort, not necessarily warmth, but protection. Everything was still uneasy, sure, but the experience was much more bearable this time.

Much to Penni’s comfort, it was only a few short moments until the two came out of the other side of the portal corridor, bright sunlight hit the girl’s skin, the warmth tickling her with immense solace. It was such a warm welcome compared to the drabby coldness she had been enduring as of late.

Penni took a deep breath, the salty smell of the nearby ocean filling her nose as the sound of seagulls called out nearby. By the looks of it, she was standing on a sandy mini beach on the edge of a patch of lush, green tropical forest.

“This is Neverland?” Penni gawked, staring out at the aqua-blue ocean and the full palm trees. “I’ve never been somewhere so…blissful.” The whole scenery reminded her of the type of place she would see on a postcard, picture-perfect. Her mom always talked about going to a place as alluring as the beach Penni stood on.

“It would be a lovely vacation, don’t you think so?”

That’s what she always would say, she even set aside munny in an old jar for the conceptualized trip. “I would say it’s a fine reward for when you come back home, a way to celebrate and unwind from another great school year!”

Penni’s mom always tried giving her the better things in life, carefully made clothes you’d think were tailored from some sublime company store, while in reality, her mom spent her extra time sitting at the table on the sewing machine. Or an exceptional education at some prestigious boarding school, like the school in her hometown wasn’t ‘prestigious’ enough.

“Only the best for my Penniton, trust me, this will be a great first step for your future.”

If only mom could see the future Penni was in right now.

“Mmm, it’s not as nice as Atlantica though,” Demyx said, looking out at the water thoughtfully like he was daydreaming.

“We should start looking for those heartless!” Suggested Penni rather eagerly. Cut down the numbers, to do that Penni would have to find some heartless. Those were the thoughts that went through Penni’s head as she turned away from the sea to get going on her objective.

“Uh- yeah, about that Penni.” Demyx said, stopping Penni’s advances by putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m actually not very good at these types of missions,” The man gulped, his hand scratching the back of his neck. “Honestly they’re just not for me, y’know? I’m way better at recon missions and stuff.”

“Recon missions-?” Penni mumbled before shaking her head, she’ll ask about it at a different time. “So you don’t fight at all?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I totally can, but I’m sure not good at it.” He explained in a weakened tone, his eyes awkwardly avoiding Penni’s gaze. The girl couldn’t help but frown, uttering a hushed ‘ah,’ with a face turned away to hide her irked expression. “But it’s all cool since you got a keyblade!” Demyx looked back at Penni with a cheery grin on his face, “By the way, do you think I can see it?”

“Huh, my keyblade?” Penni outstretched her hand, concentrating on summoning the key-shaped object like she did not too long ago, her eyebrows furrowing with intense focus.

Though, it wasn’t long until her focused expression faltered when she realized with slight panic in her voice that, “It’s not appearing.” Penni’s tone dropped to a whisper voice as her hand slightly twitched.

“What was that?”

“We should stay focused like Saix said. Fighter or not, you gotta stick with me, we’re…’partners’ after all.” She said in a hasty attempt to switch the subject. Yet she wasn’t exactly lying, the two did have to keep their sights on the objective.

“Let’s get going.” Penni insisted, resuming her advancement inward into the lush greenery, a dejected ‘awh man’ heard from behind her.

The word partners also dragged on Penni’s tongue, she found the word simply unfit for what she would call her and Demyx. Her partner was supposed to assist their mission, not lag behind in the combat department because it’s just ‘not for them’.

In the meantime, Penni would have to figure out a solution to her current predicament. Her right hand clenched and unclenched in hopes it would materialize while she was in her deep thoughts. How come she isn’t able to summon it now, on command? She was able to do it not too long ago when she met Xigbar. What was so different now?

The notion began chewing Penni up in her mind, if she couldn’t use her keyblade, the only thing that was to her name at the moment, then what was the point of her existence in the organization? Or her existence at all? She had a major job to do, so why couldn’t her key just work the way she wanted it to and appear?

For now, she’ll just have to keep her dilemma to herself to the best of her ability, and especially keep it unknown to the blonde behind her. While Demyx did seem nice enough, he was bound to rat her out to Saix, or worse, Xemnas.

“Or maybe both,” Penni whimpered aloud, her feet feeling just a little bit heavier with each step she took, lips pursing.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

It was nothing, everything was fine, everything was cool. Everything was-

“Get back here!”

The sudden new voice caused both Penni and Demyx to freeze up, the girl in a defensive stance and the blonde propped up behind her like she was a sort of human shield.

At that time, Penni swore she saw something zip in front of her view, but couldn’t dawdle on the thought for long because a ginger boy dressed in green came practically tumbling out of some bushes.

“Darn shadow, where did you go?” He grumbled in a pouty tone, the boy got himself up off the ground and readjusted the cap on his head with a huff. Penni's arms relaxed, a relieved sigh leaving. She let out a purposeful cough to get the boy’s attention.

“Oh, hey there!” The boy greeted, “Say, have you seen my shadow around here, It’s about this tall I would say.” He explained, marking the imaginary height with his hand.

“Shadow? I don’t think we’ve-” Penni looked to the back of her to see her partner was in fact, nowhere to be found. “-I don’t think I’ve seen a loose shadow around here.”

Was this a joke? Was this boy really looking for his shadow? Penni’s eyes flashed down to where both her and the boy’s shadow would be. Much to her surprise, hers was there, but not his.

Weird, who is this guy?

What was seen to be a fickle ball of light quickly swerved past Penni, distracting her from the chance to start asking investigating questions. It flew all the way over to the boy, landing on his shoulder. Squinting, the girl made out a humanoid figure of a tiny person with blonde hair tied in a bun along with a short green leafy dress. But the most outstanding feature was the clear set of wings that Penni has never seen on any kind of insect or bug. There was only one logical conclusion on what she was looking at.

“A fairy!” Penni gasped out in astonishment, her face lightening up in delight. “A real-life fairy, she’s so pretty!”

“Yep! This is my pal, Tinkerbell.” The boy introduced as the small fairy gave a mini courtesy of sorts. Penni swore she saw her mouth move but the only thing she heard was the light jingling of what supposedly were bells.

…Ohhh.

“And I’m Peter, Peter Pan!” Peter said proudly, throwing his hands over his hips.

“Pleasure to meet you two, I’m Penniton, but call me Penni.”

“Alright Penni, would ya mind helping me out in finding my shadow, he should be around here somewhere…” Normally, or in any other situation, Penni would gladly assist him. But right now she had a job to do, and a missing blonde.

“Ah, I would but I’m a little busy right now- I’m looking for a couple of shadows myself,” Tinkerbell said something to Peter before they both curiously looked back at Penni.

“What type of shadows?” Peter asked, tilting his head.

“Oh, well…” The girl, not expecting such a question, thought about it for a second. “They’re about this big, all black, and have two skinny antennas. You’ve seen any?”

“Nope, don’t think I have. But hey! Maybe if you help us you’ll find what you're looking for along the way.”

“As much fun as that sounds, I really should focus on my own thing.” Penni insisted, taking a few steps away from the pair. “But good luck find your- er- shadow!”

The duo looked faintly disappointed, which made Penni feel a small tinge of guilt in her heart.

“I’ll make sure I keep a lookout for it.” She offered, that brought a smile back to Peter’s face.

“Alright, see ya around then Penni!” Peter gave the girl a quick wave, him and Tink then running off somewhere else to continue their search. Penni felt a small smile grow on her face, giddiness building up inside her. She just met a real fairy!

The excitement almost made her forget why she was here…almost.

“Good cover Penni!” Demyx congratulated, practically popping in next to Penni- something that didn’t fail to make her flinch.

“It wasn’t really a cover,” She mumbled. “And where did you go? I thought you left me.”

“Nah, I had to stay out of sight. World order, y’know?” Demyx rested an arm on Penni’s shoulder, something he could very easily do with his height. “By the way, I was thinking. Why don’t we split up?”

“Split up?” Penni cocked her head to the side, giving him a confused look. “What for?”

“We’ll be able to cover more ground, and if we're both collecting hearts we’ll finish the mission way faster.” The idea Demyx presented did seem reasonable in retrospect, but Penni had the small feeling there were ulterior motives behind it.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for us to split up this early, if I need help you have to be close to me to actually- y’know, help me.” Penni said slightly impassively, “And like I said before, we’re partners so we gotta stick together.”

“Whatever you say, Penni.” The blonde muttered, and the girl could practically feel the aura of his sulkiness.

After a while of walking aimlessly through the dense trees, Penni failed to think of any small talk to make with her partner. She had a lot of questions to ask Demyx, sure, but questions were the only ones leaving her mouth as of late so she attempted to refrain from asking them for now. She opened her mouth to finally say something, but the sound of rustling leaves made her and Demyx pause.

“Do you hear that?” Penni asked, looking around cautiously, her hands scanning the area. She slightly flinched when she saw several figures move through the trees above. Her right hand tightened around nothing as she tried to visualize her keyblade.

Visualize, visualize, visualize…

Her eyes narrowed as the figures stopped moving, jumping down to lower branches where Penni could now easily see them, their backsides anyways. Her body relaxed as her hand untightened.

“Awh, it's just a bunch of monkeys!” Penni cooed with a gleeful smile on her face, looking up at the absolutely adorable animals.

“Are you sure? They look way too colorful to be monkeys…” Demyx mumbled, making a concerned face. ‘Tis was true, from what the girl could see, the creatures were shades of pink and blue, she shrugged this off though.

“Maybe it’s normal for this world, if there are magical fairies, then multicolored monkeys don’t seem too far-fetched.”

But, Penni couldn’t help but stare at the animals a little longer, and that’s when she noticed something. For a bunch of monkeys, they were awfully quiet, in fact, they didn’t make any sound resembling a monkey at all. And hey-, did the pink ones have bows on their heads?

Then, one of the monkeys turned around, making direct eye contact with Penniton. It was only then she could see its full appearance, those infamous, beady yellow eyes bored right into hers.

“Those aren’t monkeys,”

#kingdom hearts #fanfic #ao3 #non canon compliant #OC #oc fiction #writers on tumblr #writing #Back:drop #peaches writes

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cannedpeachesxp · 1 year

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Stampede

#trigun #trigun stampede #trigun fanart #vash stampede #peaches draws #fanart #my art #this show is so good I’m only on episode 3 #please watch it rn

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cannedpeachesxp · 1 year

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“My darling, stay gold”

#peaches draws #my art #ART IMPROVEMENT TEEHEE #oc #guys look at my girl #I actually drew this months ago #shhhh

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cannedpeachesxp · 1 year

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AYO I just found a fix for the problem I’ve been having with SCM music player. If the music player won’t load and/or play any songs go to the lock icon next to the search bar > Site settings > And make sure sound is allowed (not automatic).

#peaches talks #so happy i found a solution to this #anyways enjoy my carefully selected playlist made specificilly for reading back:drop

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cannedpeachesxp · 1 year

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”The held back girl lives on in the midst of despair”

#this is going right into the portfolio #super proud #Penniton #also back:drop part 2 is most def coming out soon #peaches draws #my art #Back:drop #oc #look at her rocking out on her silly little guitar #go penpen go

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cannedpeachesxp · 2 years

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Back:drop (Part I)

AO3 Link

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Quick Summary: School student Penniton has noticed that some weird, mysterious stuff have been happening around town as of late. Not only that, but she’s been feeling a sense of dread lately. Hopefully none of that will interfere with the upcoming school festival, or her grades for that matter.

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Penniton slumped down in her seat, her arms laying crisscrossed on the desk. She looked down at her paper, questions sat there waiting to be filled out and finished. Every second Penni looked down at the assignment her eyelids would droop even more as she struggled to keep herself awake. It was almost the end of class and Penni had barely made any progress on her schoolwork, she just simply didn’t have the motivation to do it, she couldn’t even focus on any of the questions without her mind turning blank.

This was the same for anything schoolwork, homework, quiz, test, project, anything! Penni just couldn’t put the effort into doing them, that is until they all become due at once, and then she’s forced to spend hours staying up late just to finish them because God forbid that she ends off the semester with lousy grades. This usually did her very few favors, Penni just felt burnt out by the end of it which led to her feeling burnt out and tired in class which led to her not doing the work until the last minute, rinse and repeat.

In all honesty, there was only one reason Penniton still cared enough to go through that cycle, her mother. She wanted to make her proud, she just had to. The image of her mom working so late in the night at their attire shop lives in Penni’s head 24/7. The fact that her mom spent all that money just to send Penni to this prestigious boarding school made the young girl feel like she had to do good and keep her grades up, like it was her imposed duty.

But what was the point in all of this if Penni had to be so far from her hometown? About an hour too far to just walk to and back. It wasn’t possible for her to just buy a train ticket every time she wanted to go see her mom (which was every day more she’d spent at this school), Penniton simply didn’t have the money for it.

Penniton was so sick of all of this. These thoughts swirled around in her head as her eyes closed completely, not bothering to try and wake herself up. Penni didn’t have to though, the bells did that for her.

The ringing made her shoot right up in her seat as she scrambled to stuff the unfinished assignment in her bag, beelining towards and out the door to join the hoards of students making their way out to their after-school activities.

‘Finally’ Penni thought, the corners of her mouth rising into a smile of relief, she brought her hand up to push her glasses back into the right positions, they always slid down her face frequently since they were a tad too big for her. As Penni walked down the mildly crowded halls, she started thinking about her next move.

“Heyo, Penniton!” Called a chirpy, feminine voice. Penni turned her to look back at the blonde-haired girl whose hair ombre into a red like a sunset. She was running to catch up to her, waving one hand and holding her school bag in the other. Penni’s face practically lit up as her usual happy mood began to return to her. Veneta put her hand on Penniton’s shoulder and grinned.

“So, how was class? By the way, you look terrible, what happened to you?” Rolling her eyes Penni answered in a sarcastic voice, “The most craziest thing happened, I stayed up all night to finish a project due the next day and paid the price for it! Can you believe that?” She put her hand to her mouth and gave Veneta a dumbfounded look for dramatic effect.

“Well I know the perfect way to cheer you up, take a look at these!” Veneta stopped in front of Penniton to pull two small tickets out of her bag, her face beaming with proudness painted all over her face, her hands raised in the air, gripping the tickets like they were winning lottery stubs.

“Ah…tickets?” Penniton questioned, her head slightly tilting sideways with confusion.

“Not just any tickets my dear Penni, tickets to the school festival!” Veneta waved the tickets around joyously, repeating again and again, ‘We’re going to the festival~!’ in some sort of sing-song form.

That was right. Each year the school would hold its Annual Cultural Festival. Classes, clubs, and other groups of students would get to put up their own small booths or turn whole classrooms into all kinds of things.

In fact, Penniton had heard stories of how one year, some seniors turned one of the classrooms into a cat cafe, it went pretty well, until the cats escaped. It sounded like a lot of genuine fun could be had.

“Go on, say it! I’m the greatest friend you ever had aren’t I?” “Mmm, I dunno…” Penniton muttered as if she was pondering if what Veneta said was a true fact or not. Veneta put her hand to her heart as it had just been shattered into a million pieces from Penniton’s words.

“Penniton Bridges, how could you?” Gasped Veneta before the two both started laughing at each other's antics.

“Alright, alright, I guess you're the greatest friend I’ve ever had.” Admitted Penniton, the duo resumed walking down the hallways, which had cleared up a bit. Veneta handed Penniton one of the tickets.

“When is the festival anyway?”

“The first day of spring break, so in a few days. But the real question is what our booth theme is gonna be.” Veneta stated, putting her pointer finger up, just like how the teachers would when they would remind students of an important fact.

Penniton gave Veneta a confused look, Veneta’s eyes widened and she let out a small giggle.

“That’s right, I forgot to tell you, I signed up for one of the booths!” Veneta had that proud expression smeared across her face again. Penniton, on the other hand, was less than enthusiastic.

“What?” Penniton asked before blinking a few times, checking if she heard that right.

“Hey- earth to Penni,” Ven spoke, waving her hand in front of Penniton’s face to grab her attention again, “We’re gonna run one of the booths together, it'll be fun!”

“Wait, let me try to understand this,'' Penniton started, “You signed both of us up for a booth at the school festival,”

“Yeah.”

“Without asking me about it?”

“Yeah…”

“Along with no idea on what we’re even going to do?”

“Well when you put it that way, you make it sound like I’m jumping into this with no plan.”

Veneta snorted out, a nonchalant look on her face. Penniton shot Veneta an exasperated look which made Veneta’s mouth slowly form an ‘oh.’

“Well, it isn’t as bad as you think, we have like, the rest of the week and then some to figure this out, we’ll be just fine! Don’t you worry,” Veneta gleefully reassured.

At that moment, Veneta seemed to have been hit with a wonderful idea before suddenly exclaiming. “Come to our dorm room at 5, for now, go into town or something!”

“Hey, wait-!” Penniton called out, but Veneta was already out the door. Penniton could only let a small smile form on her face, Veneta brought a lotta light into Penniton’s life, and she was happy because of it. Readjusting her tie, she made her way towards one of the school’s exits, the hallways were now clear with only a few students walking through them. . . . .

There were a lotta ways to get to town from the school, from there, you could pick any direction and start walking. Eventually, you would end up somewhere in town, it’s like that because the school campus sits on a hill and the town surrounds it, easy accessibility (probably contributed to why the school was so favored).

Penniton's favorite path to take from school to town was the Backdrop, no one actually called it that. That was courtesy of Penniton herself. No one besides her and Veneta knew about it so it was always quiet and had a lot of privacy.

The two had found it one day in autumn after Veneta had tumbled into a bush which revealed the makeshift path on the other side rather than more woods. If one were to walk down that path they would come across this ancient-looking, overgrown stone statute accompanied by a bench. The statue itself looked like what was supposed to be a person, but the top half was gone, maybe it fell off one day due to age? The block the person stood on had a passage of words engraved onto it, but the whole thing itself was so worn down Penniton could only make out bits and pieces. It was something about hearts, light, darkness, and a lot of other things Penni couldn’t understand.

There was one cool thing about the Backdrop, it was a perfect place to hang out and do schoolwork. Penni and Veneta once had the idea of hanging up leftover holiday lights from the low hanging tree branches to make the place comfy for them. It was only after the two robbed the school supply closet and hung the lights up, that they realized there was no way of turning them on since there was no outlet to plug them into. Penniton and Veneta never bothered taking them back down, so they're still up to this day.

This time, Penniton continued down the path of the Backdrop, she would sit down later, but right now she planned to go into town and help Mr. Gussefermire in his convenience store (Penni called him Mr. Guss for short).

Mr. Guss was a really nice old man with a bushy, brown mustache that was slightly gray-tinted. He also had a nice accent, Penni greatly liked that about him. On most days Penniton would work a couple of hours after school at his shop and in return, he would give Penniton some money. It was a win-win! Wait...isn’t that what a job is?

Not too much walking later, Penni made her way into town, the pleasant sounds of it filling her ears. Inhaling deeply, Penniton could smell the sweet scent of bread and all kinds of other freshly made goods from the bakery. Maybe later she’ll buy something for Veneta.

Walking along the cobblestone road a few kids on bikes passed her, laughing as they did and ultimately having fun. Well, for the most part, until they almost plowed into some other people who were less than happy and began nagging at them.

Penniton opened the door to Mr. Guss' convenience store, the bell ringing as she did. “Good afternoon Mr. Gussefer!” Penniton greeted, grabbing her work apron of the jacket hook and tying it on swiftly. She used to have trouble tying the apron on without having to use a mirror, but she had gotten pretty good at it now.

“And good afternoon to you, Ms. Penni!” Mr. Guss cheerfully greeted her from behind his counter. “I trust the school has been well for you, yes?”

“Fine as always,” Penniton replied with her eyes shifted away from Mr. Guss, she rubbed the back of her neck with her hand before renewing eye contact again. “So, what do you need me to do today?”

“The shelves just need to be restocked, and after that, I would appreciate it if you could sweep out front.” Mr. Guss explained, pushing up his small oculars, “I’ll just be here, tending the register.”

Penniton nodded, heading into the dimly lit storage closet to grab any boxes of stock the store had, as she was walking out of the closet, two children came running into the store. A boy and a girl, they both looked out of breath, as if they ran all the way over here. Penniton would stop to ask them what was wrong but they were probably here to talk to Mr. Guessefermire, a lot of people knew him, after all, he did run the only convenience store in town. Making her way to one of the tiny isles, Penniton began restocking items, but she still kept her ears open to hear what the children were saying.

“It was all black, with these beady yellow eyes!” The boy said, pointing to his widened eyes in emphasis. The little girl chimed in as well, just as panicked sounding as her friend, the only difference was that her voice was slightly softer.

“The creature had these super-sharp claws too, and- and-” The girl couldn’t get her words out and began stumbling over them, “-and antennas!”

‘Antennas?’ Penniton thought. What type of animal did they see that had antennas? Well, lots of animals had antennas, but not any that would scare the kids this badly. Penniton continued her blatant, shameless eavesdropping, even going as far as to peek behind the shelf she was stocking.

“Now calm down you two, where did you see this animal of yours?” Mr. Guss asked, he was skeptical about what the whole ordeal, Penniton could tell.

“It wasn’t an animal!” The boy then yelled, his hands fisted in frustration. The girl softly took the boy’s arm, giving him a disapproving frown which got him to quiet down. The girl then explained.

“We saw it over at the old well, in that woody area,” She was referring to the area behind the playground, past the wire fence. Adults would always tell kids not to go over there since there was the chance of wild animals lurking around (the woods near the playground were very much occupied by them). Children, of course, wouldn’t listen and utilized a large hole in the fence to get over to the concealed woods. When they found the old well, it pretty much became a hangout spot.

“Barely a well if you could call it that,” Penniton mumbled, it was just some mismatched stones put on top of each other and a deep, dark, almost always dry hole.

“And how many times did I tell you to stay away from those woods?” Mr. Guss nagged, his already wrinkly face scrunching up into a frown.

“Now, you kids best get on your way, and don’t go around telling other kids about that animal, no one wants to deal with a whole rumor.” And with that, Gussefer shooed the kids out of the store. Penniton looked down at the pile of cans she had yet to finish stacking, looking at the two children slump out of the store.

Hastily, she piled the cans onto the shelf haphazardly before grabbing the broom leaning against the wall.

“I finished restocking, gonna go sweep outside!” Penniton yelled, hurrying out the door to catch up with those kids before Mr. Guss could say anything.

Outside, Penniton looked around, luckily, she saw the duo sitting on the curb, talking to each other. Looking at the two, Penniton saw that they were twins, both with hazel-like hair and these mismatched brown and blue eyes. Their skin was tan as well.

Approaching the two, broom still in hand, Penniton started talking, “Alright kiddos, heard you saw a monster over by the well, yeah?”

The girl looked at her brother, who was eyeing Penniton with suspicion.

“Who’s asking?” He questioned her.

“Penniton Bridges, at your service.” Penni took a bow, “I…’overheard’ your conversation with Mr. Guss, looks like he thinks this monster of yours is nothing but some dirty old raccoon.”

“We swear it wasn’t!” The girl promised, she stood up, pointing to herself. “My name is Mandy, and this is my brother, Mason. Earlier today we were playing at the well and out of nowhere-”

“This black thing jumps out at us and attacks us!” Mason shouted, “It had sharp claws and yellow eyes and,”

“-She knows Mason, she heard the whole conversation.” Mandy assured. She continued, “No one believes us, but we have to prove what we saw. We don’t want anyone going over there and getting hurt.” Mandy’s voice sank as her eyes dropped to the ground, Penniton gazed at the twins as she felt something in her heart ache. Well, she couldn’t just let these poor kids sit and worry.

Penni inhaled deeply before asking, “You wouldn’t happen to have a camera, would you?” . . . .

Penniton slugged her way down the dorm hallways, tomorrow after school she would head to the woods with the twins and find whatever tormented them, simple enough, right?

She just finished her shift so Penni had a little extra munny in her pockets, sweet.

Absolutely exhausted, she opened her dorm room door to find Veneta seated on her bed, flipping through a similar sketchbook…too similar…wait a second.

“Is that my journal?” Penniton shouted, her face becoming pink with immense embarrassment and her eyes wide, full of dread. She practically lunged at Veneta, just so she could take back hold of her sketchbook, holding it tightly to her chest.

“Woah, calm down Pen-pen,” Veneta giggled. ‘Pen-Pen’, that was new.

“Those dress designs of yours are super cute, I can’t believe you never showed me!”

“For good reason, you were never supposed to see those,” Penniton grumbled out, tucking the notebook in her junk-filled drawer.

“Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed, those drawings are so good, you should be proud!'' Veneta said with her positive attitude.

Scooting next to Penniton, she took the notebook back out and began flipping through the pages, stopping on a specific one.

“This one is my favorite,” Veneta spoke in a softer voice, her eyes gazing at the drawing in adoration.

“It looks like something you would wear, the puffy see-through material and the shiny gold stuff, it definitely screams Penniton!” Penniton slightly giggled as Veneta rested her head on her shoulder.

“Alright, alright, now what was it you were going to show me?” Asked Penniton with an upbeat grin, cocking an eyebrow at Veneta whose eyes lit up.

Jumping up suddenly, she grabbed some plastic bags on the floor and quickly placed each item on the desk. What laid on the desk now were the ingredients to make various amounts of ice cream flavors and popsicle molds.

“We’re making ice cream?” Penniton questioned aloud. Looking at Veneta skeptically she asked, “Veneta, have you ever made ice cream before?”

“Nope, but I thought it would be a good idea for our booth!” Veneta explained, “Annnnnddd it would be a good way to get some more munny in our pockets!” Before Penniton could interject, Veneta began her sales pitch.

“Imagine a hot day at the school festival, there are sure to be students who would like to buy some cold ice cream to cool them down!” Veneta smiled at Penniton, waiting for her answer.

Penni had an unsure look on her face, her ‘I don’t about this’ expression.

“I kinda already spent most of my money buying the stuff to make it so…” Veneta added,

Penni sighed.

“Oh alright, fine.”

“Heck yeah!” Veneta cheered, throwing her hands in the air. “We can start making it tomorrow since the school kitchen is probably closed by now, don’t be late, ok?” Penni nodded, her lips curling oh so slightly at Veneta’s excitement. Making ice cream couldn’t be that hard, right? . . . .

Today was Saturday, meaning Veneta was gonna be asleep until the afternoon so Penniton had to sneak out of their dorm room quietly so as not to wake her. On Saturdays she worked at Mr. Guss’s shop early in the morning, meaning once she was finished with her shift, Penni was free by 12:30. It also meant it was time to help out those twins.

Penniton found them sitting around at the playground, they looked pretty anxious, squirming around in place fiddling with their thumbs. They jumped right up when they saw Penni, Mandy holding the camera tightly to her chest.

“What took you so long, we’ve been waiting here forever!” Mason huffed with his cheeks puffed out and his arms crossed. He had an instant camera draped on his neck, just like Penni had asked.

“I had work, I have a job y’know,” Penniton said, flicking Mason’s forehead. “Now, are we gonna find this forest monster or not?”

“It’s right through here,” Mandy said, ducking under the hole in the fence, Mason handed Penniton the camera before following his sister’s lead. The thing with the hole is little kids could get under there easily, but 8-year-olds compared to 14-year-olds is a pretty big difference in size.

Penni took some steps back from the fence, looking around the playground. No one was really out here this early so she was good.

With a running start, she jumped onto the fence, vaulting over it, and landed on the ground albeit perfectly, but safely.

The twins stared at her wide-eyed, their faces full of absolute awe. Penniton dusted herself off, giving the twins a confused look she asked, “What, do I have something on my face?”

“Where’d you learn that lady?” Mason asked, practically jumping up and down.

“Yeah, that was so cool, you went flying right over the fence!” Mandy said, her hand going through the air, kinda mimicking a plane for effect.

“Well when you spent most of your childhood hopping over fences to get overthrown soccer balls, you learn a few things.” Penniton snickered, winking at the twins. Her mind slightly drifted off to when she still lived in her hometown, Penni was the referee for all the soccer games the younger kids had. That also meant she was always the one to retrieve the ball when it was kicked a little too far.

“Now let’s get going,” The twins took a few good steps forward before Penniton yelped out a ‘wait!’ They both turned their heads around to see what was wrong, “Stay behind me, I don’t want you two getting hurt or anything.”

The twins nodded as they snuck behind Penniton, the three taking small steps deeper into the woods.

It was eerie the further they got, it sounded less like the town and more like nature, birds, and other critters. The leaves crunching under their feet with each step they took, the light resting off the foliage. It would be calming if they weren’t trying to look for a mystery monster. Soon enough though they got to the old well, Mason spoke up.

“This is where we saw it,” his voice was quieter than usual. “We were over there when it jumped out at us.”

Penniton nodded as she picked up a long branch, if the worst happened, something was getting smacked. Hard.

“Alright you two, if anything happens, run the other way immediately, okay?” Penniton said sternly, pointing her finger at Mandy and Mason, they nodded profusely with a small ‘mhm!’

Before Penni could even start investigating the area, she heard a rustle from the nearby bushes. Well, that didn’t take long. Creeping forward, she gripped onto the branch tightly, her hand brushes against the leaves, whatever was hiding in there stopped moving when it sensed Penniton, she took a deep breath before roughly pulling them out of the way

A small raccoon gave out a small squeal before it ran out from under the bushes, past Penniton and the twins before disappearing somewhere else in the woods. Anti-climatic much?

Penni snorted, “Huh, guess it really was a critter.” She dropped the branch and smiled softly at the twins who, more or less, had a look of disappointment mixed with somewhat relief.

But, before anyone could say anything else, something launched itself out of the bushes, causing both the twins to yelp and Penniton to fumble and pick the tree branch up again as fast as she could. Armed and alarmed she looked back at the twins, some of her nerves put to rest as she saw that they already were running for it.

Looking back at the black monster, it was in an aggressive stance, at least that’s what Penniton could assume, but its sharp claws honestly said it all. It wasted no time targeting Penni and leaped out to take a swipe at her, slightly panicked; she countered this quickly and knocked it back onto the ground. It was stunned for a moment, taking this chance Penniton frantically hit the monster repeatedly with her branch, not stopping until it visibly went limp. Penniton froze, lowering her branch slowly with her eyebrows furrowed. She cautiously kneeled down to look closely at the black thing.

“Is it…dead?”

Apparently not, as it perked up again and this time Penni couldn’t react fast enough, frightened she put her hands up defensively and shut her eyes before it lunged at her, attempting to protect herself from the probably painful moment coming next…but it never came.

She opened her eyes again, after a few moments of silence. She could hear shifting, but not of skin, or fur, or whatever that creature had, it was of clothes..

Penniton opened her eyes, staring into the darkness of the shaded woods, seeing was difficult as everything was blurry without her glasses. She must’ve dropped them when she tried to guard herself.

From what she could make out, Penniton could see the shape of a black, blurry shadow getting bigger and bigger as it approached her, causing Penniton to back up in fear.

Unexpectedly, she felt her glasses being shoved onto her face, becoming slightly tangled in her kinky hair.

Confused, she slowly untangled her glasses, blinking a few times as her eyes began to focus on a man dressed in a black coat, accompanied with long, black, straight hair that had white streaks in it and was tied up. Penniton couldn’t see his face though as he had already turned his back at Penniton, walking away as fast as he came.

“Hey, wait!” Penniton yelped out, she scrambled to pick herself up, trailing right behind the man who hadn’t even spared her a glance. The man flipped his hood up so there was no way of Penni seeing his face even if he would turn around to look at her.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” The man said, his voice was kinda rough sounding.

“It’s Saturday, I don’t even have school,” Penniton answered rather bluntly, but soon the unfathomable panic of her previous situation set back in, “But, what was that thing- and who are you?”

“Not even a ‘thank you.’” Stated the man sarcastically, “Yeesh, kids these days. So rude.”

Thank you? Maybe this mysterious man did save Penniton, she couldn’t be sure since everything happened so fast, but the creature was gone the moment he appeared so, inhaling deeply she said, “I almost died, can you really blame me for not saying it? I’m still in shock!”

“Your fault for being here in the first place.” The man objected. Penni would’ve thought he was scolding her if he didn’t sound so nonchalant about it. Penniton opened her mouth to say something else but decided against it, she wanted to stay on subject. So she gently reminded the man,

“You still never answered my questions, who are you, and what was that?” Penniton flinched slightly, surprised to see the man whip around and finally look at her. Even with the hood on, Penni could see the smallest glint of a yellow eye. The color seemed so…unnatural. The man chuckled.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” The man said in a snarky tone. His eyes flashed down for a second, his hand raised and pointed at Penni. “By the way, you might want to get that fixed.”

Penniton raised an eyebrow as she looked down at the camera she borrowed from the twins. Her face went pale when she realized what had happened to it. The lens was totally broken, the whole camera was wrecked. When did this happen?

Penniton mumbled out a small curse, “How did this-” She stopped mid-sentence, realizing the hooded man was gone, like he was never there in the first place. Her eyes traveled around the eerily quiet forest, her mind filled with more questions than answers. . . .

Penniton climbed over the fence, landing roughly on the ground with a small grunt. She had a few scrapes and scratches from her scuffle in the forest, although she didn’t pay much mind to them.

Penni was lost in very deep thought, more concerned about what exactly happened back there. Should she go tell someone? The authorities maybe? Would they even believe her, some random high schooler?

“Of course not. If they didn’t believe Mandy and Mason, to them, I’d just sound crazy,” Penniton thought out loud, “Probably think I’m pranking them or something.”

Using her hands to dust any loose dirt on her off. What she didn’t expect though, was two small bodies tackling her, enveloping her in a tight hug.

“Penniton, you’re okay!” Cried Mandy, her face full of prominent relief.

“We…we thought you were,” Mason was struggling to say his words between obvious sniffles and teary eyes. “g- gone!”

Penniton's face softened, a small smile coming onto her face as she returned the hug, putting her arms around the twins.

“I’m perfectly fine and alive, see? Just a few scratches, that’s all.” Penniton kneeled down to meet the twins at their height, She squinted at Mason’s face.

“Have you been crying?”

Mandy put her hand over her mouth to cover up her small giggled. Mason puffed up his cheeks, using his sleeve to wipe away anything on his face.

“No, I don’t cry!” He argued, his eyebrows furrowing. “You just scared us, that’s all.”

Mason and Mandy’s eyes then drifted down to the camera still draped around Penniton’s neck, Penni gulped as she unhooked the camera straps from her neck, holding it out to the twins. How would she get herself out of this one?

“Yeah…the lens kinda broke during the whole debacle. Listen, I’ll buy you guys a new one as soon as I have the money for it-” “Are you kidding, this is great!” Mason exclaimed, his face beaming as he took the camera from Penniton, inspecting it fully in glee. Penniton was stunned as well as confused, Mason was quick to answer her puzzlement. “This is direct evidence that what we saw was real!”

“And,” Mandy chimed in “Our dad works on the town newspaper and our mom is a photographer, so we have tons of more.”

Penniton breathed a sigh of relief, putting her hand over her chest. “Well serendipity, I guess.”

“Say, we should come back tomorrow, make sure that thing is gone for good!” Mason impulsively suggested Mandy, nodded her head in agreement eagerly. Penniton’s eyebrows raised at the thought and she quickly shook her head.

“No, no, no need to do anything of that!” Penniton explained, her voice hitching, “believe me, I saw it with my own eyes. That monster is longggg gone.”

“Then we can go back to playing back there again?” Mandy asked, tilting her head.

“Er- well,” Penniton's eyes shifted around the environment. “You kids shouldn't be over there in the first place, you saw that raccoon!”

“It ran away the moment it saw us.” Mason protested, crossing his arms.

“Ah, but if there was a raccoon surely there would be other animals, right?” Penniton grinned, putting her pointer finger up in the air. The twins' eyes peaked as they looked at each other with worry.

“What do you mean by ‘other animals’ lady?” Mason asked, his determined attitude wavering,

“Y’know, the normal forest critters…” Penniton casually said before putting her arms up as if they were claws, making the twins jump.

“Lions, tigers, and bears! You wouldn’t want to encounter any of those vicious beasts now would you?” The twins profusely shook their heads muttering ‘no way,’ and ‘never!’

Penniton smiled, ruffling one of the twin’s hair. “So, you guys promise you won’t go back to the forest again?” “We promise!” The twins said enthusiastically. . .

“Talk about hot garbage.” Veneta snickered as she carefully put small, colorful bandages and Penniton’s minor cuts. “But seriously, what were you up to today?

“Feral cat, that’s all,” Penniton blatantly lied, Veneta made a face as she finished patching up Penniton. Plopping down on her bed next to her.

“It didn’t have rabies, right?” Veneta joked, slightly nudging Penni.

She blinked a few times in reconsideration, did it have rabies? Wait, Penniton doesn’t remember ever seeing a mouth on the creature. Did it have something worse than rabies? What if it was diseased or something?

“Hellooo, Earth to Bridges, you're doing that thing again,” Veneta said, briefly waving her hand in front of Penniton. Penni let out a weak laugh and shook her head.

“Nothing like rabies or whatever, just a really angry cat.” Penniton reassured Veneta, “Anyways, we should get started on that ice cream, yeah? Before the kitchen closes.”

“Heck yeah! We’re gonna make the best ice cream this school has ever tasted!” . . .

“This is the most suckiest ice cream I’ve tasted,” Penniton grunted holding the ice cream in her hand, her face still scrunched up from the mere flavor.

“Take another bite, maybe it’ll get better,” Veneta suggested, but it came out more like an unsure question. Penniton shrugged, taking another small lick of ice cream, her mouth puckered up even more than the first time.

“It’s salty,” Penniton hissed out, her voice slightly strained. Veneta took a bit out of her ice cream, nodding her head, seemingly content with the flavor.

“But sweet!” Veneta pointed out, smiling.

“You actually like this stuff?” Penniton asked, giving Veneta a face of disgust.

“Yeah, it tastes really good!”

“You're weird,” Penniton said, rolling her eyes as she started to clean up the mess they made in the kitchen.

Veneta let out a small laugh, putting the rest of the ice cream in the freezer.

“Good thing we made multiple flavors, in case there are other people like you with low ice cream standards,” before Penniton could argue any further, Veneta took her hand suddenly, causing her to go silent, waiting to hear what her best friend was going to say.

In a whispering voice, Veneta said, “I have something to show you, on the roof,” leading Penni out of the kitchen.

“The…the roof? But, we’re not allowed up there!” Penniton was having trouble mustering up words, still focused on Veneta's hand holding hers.

“We’ll get in trouble!”

“We won’t get in trouble if we don’t get caught,” Veneta grinned, reassuring Penniton as they went up the stairs.

Veneta stopped at a window, carefully unlocking it and lifting it up, the cool night air flowing in. She carefully guided her and Penni out, using the large stool of it as their steps.

At that point Penniton stayed close to the window, letting go of Veneta out of fear, but Veneta continued, climbing up the old, rusted shingles.

“I don’t know about this,” Penniton mumbled out, looking up at Veneta worryingly.

“Hey, it's okay,” Veneta reassured, holding out her hand to Penniton, “You can trust me.”

Penniton looked at Veneta’s outstretched hand, she took a deep breath in and nodded, grabbing hold. The two of them heedfully made their way to the ledge on the tip of the roof, both sitting down with their legs dangling off the edge.

“So why did you bring me up here again?” Penniton asked with a shaky voice, her eyes focused on how high up they were.

“Because of this,” Veneta grinned, she pointed up at the sky, causing Penniton to raise her head. She let out a small gasp, her eyes widening. Above them was a twinkling, ultramarine blue sea of lights. Some of them were big, some were small, some in the between.

“Pretty cool, right?” Veneta stared up at the sky in awe as well.

“Constellations are easy to see if you know how to look for them, and it just so happens I aced a class on that!”

“You passed a class?” Penni exclaimed, shocked. Veneta glared at her, “Yes, yes I did.”

“Alright,” Penniton shrugged her shoulders, unconvinced.

“Hey, what month is your birthday?”

“It’s in April, why?” Veneta then squinted at the sky, before letting out an ‘aha!’, directing Penniton to an array of stars. “Your constellation is the Pater Sapiens!”

“Is that so?” Penniton giggled out, her curiosity now being peaked, “What other constellations are there, what’s your constellation?”

“Well, my birthday is in July, so that constellation is right over…” Veneta paused to look for the stars, “There! Sola Flamma.”

“The stars are so nice, you’ll never see something like this in my hometown.” Penniton said, laying back to see the sky better. Veneta perked up, like an idea came to her head.

“Say, if I was a star, which one do you think I would be?” Veneta asked, her eyes drifting to Penniton.

Penniton thought second, before saying in almost a mumble. “Well…I think you’d be the sun.” Penni’s words made Veneta smile, she giddily played with her hair.

“In that case, you’d be the entire night sky!” Veneta exclaimed, a proud grin on her face as she threw her hands up to the air in emphasis.

Penniton let out a laugh. Veneta could be so silly, but at the same time, it was endearing…cute even.

“That doesn’t count!” Penni playfully nudged Veneta’s shoulder.

“Well for you, it’s fitting.” Veneta said, bumping Penni back before resting her head on her shoulder. Penniton slid her hand over to Veneta’s and almost immediately, Veneta took it in hers, squeezing it lightly.

They both stayed there, staring up at the sky for a bit.

The next day, Penniton reluctantly went back to the place where she beat up that gross, feral creature. Just in case Mason, Mandy, and the other kids came back. Besides, the thought of the woods was keeping her up at night, there was a feeling nagging at her, saying ‘you need to go back, Penniton’. She sighed heavily, clutching a thick branch she picked up.

“Bring it on, I guess.”

How does she even go about handling this? Does she kill it? Trap it?

She sighed again, “Maybe I should have thought about this before going out.”

Penniton moved into the forest, looking around for anything suspicious.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

…Maybe it went away on its own? Deep in the woods to be with it’s own kind, or off to stalk some other tiny animal for food.

Penniton could only hope. Taking the previous route, she made her way back to the small clearing, looking around at every slight movement of grass, rustle of the leaves, the chirping of the birds. After a few moments, she didn’t hear anything.

“Welp, seems like there’s nothing wrong over here, guess I can just go home,” Penniton told herself, shrugging. She turned around to head back, but froze in her tracks when she heard a moderately loud, almost metallic series of gunshots, not too far from where Penni was. A reasonable person would keep going and never look back, a logical person would ignore the sound and mind their own business. Penniton did consider herself as logical and a reasonable person, it was just that right now her curiosity was getting the better of her. “I’ll just take a small look, gotta make sure everything is safe, right?”

Penniton stealthy made her way towards the sound, making her way through thick bushes. As she got closer, the sound stopped. Everything went silent for a moment. In an attempt to see what was going on, Penniton tipped toe closer to the front of the thick bushes, brushing a few leaves aside. She couldn’t see much, but what Penni did see was the familiar sight of thick, black cloth. It was that man again. Before she could make out anything else, an unexpected ‘bang!’ causing Penniton to yelp, falling face forward through the bushes onto the ground.

“You again?” The hooded man said, almost in a scoff. “I thought your near death experience scared you off.”

Penni stood up quickly, brushing the dirt off her uniform. She quickly made up an excuse, “I heard shooting and wanted to make sure everything was okay,” That didn’t sound right, who goes towards danger like that?

Penniton asked, “And you never did answer my question from before, who are you? What are you even doing out here?” What kinda maniac goes shooting perfectly innocent animals in the woods this close to town? Especially near an area where children play. He’s going to get arrested.

The man scoffed again, “As if I’d tell you, I have better things to do.”

Penniton looked around, no sign of anything he’d shot. If there was anything here, it was long gone.

“Doesn’t look like it.” She said bluntly, though it was the type of absentminded bluntness she kind of regretted looking at the beautifully metallic covered guns he was packing.

The man chuckled, noticing Penniton’s gaze drifted on the arrowlike weapons. “They're called ‘sharpshooters’ kid,” The ‘sharpshooters’ made a clicking sound, as if they were reloading, Penniton slightly flinched the noise “You’ve got guts kid, I’ll give you that.” The man thought for a moment, before saying, “Target practice.” “What?” Penni was confused. “You asked me what I was doing, the answer is target practice.” “Target practice? On what-” Penniton began, before the realization hit her, “You were out here hunting that weird animal? I thought you killed it.”

The man laughed again, and a weird sense of dread filled Penniton. It didn’t sound like a laugh of amusement, more so a laugh laced with irony.

“Oh, there’s so much more than just that one, kid, you should watch out. They never truly die, and they’ll keep coming back, again and again, and again until there’s nothing to come back to.” He turned on his heel and started to walk away. One of the little creatures appeared out of the bushes and he shot it mid lunge, right out of the air, like it was nothing.

Penniton stood there, thoroughly creeped out and confused. A singular question escaped her.

“But you’ll protect us, right?”

For some reason, the question sounded so wrong. But the statement sounded so right.

Penni walked away, thinking about the encounter the whole way home.

Penniton let out a small yawn, tired from the night before of her and Veneta doing last-minute preparations. Her face stared out into nothing as she leaned against the wooden stand.

At the moment, Penniton’s mind was having trouble focusing on one thing. She had this horrible feeling in her gut and her shoe repeatedly tapped the dirt ground.

It was a great day, beautiful even. The temperature was nice and warm, colorful balloons and streamers littered all of the school grounds, students of different grade levels alike were all around, enjoying their day and checking what stands had been set up.

The atmosphere was so light and airy, yet Penniton felt like she was a dense weight in the middle of all of it.

“This blows…” Penniton exhaled out quietly, slouching down on the ground. Veneta peered over at her friend, taking a bite of her ice cream and she waved her free hand to cool herself down.

“I know right?” Veneta laughed, Penniton's eyes darted up as she shook her head.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s so hot out here, I’ll probably get through the ice cream before anyone buys it. You probably wanna enjoy the festival since it’s your first one right?” Penniton didn’t get a chance to answer back as Veneta continued on, “Why don’t you go and check out what they have? I can handle the stand for a while, go and enjoy yourself!”

“But-”

“Nope, no butts. Besides, you should be able to enjoy this type of stuff at least once before-” Veneta cut her sentence off as she shook her head, “You go have fun Pen-pen, bring me something nice back!” Veneta said, picking Penni off of the ground and pushing her into the crowd.

Looks like there was no talking her out of this one. Penniton sighed, walking off in whatever direction seemed interesting. But to tell the truth, stuff like this was never fun without Veneta.

It wasn’t all bad though, there was this group of band kids who played a bunch of jazz selections. They were incredibly good, in fact, the crowd for them had gotten so big that people started to get together and danced to the music!

There was this one table of students from the baking club, they had made all types of different donuts, they even had some icing designs on top of them. Penni bought three, one had some stars on it and the other had a sun. The third one was a cute emblem of what looked to be a mouse. Penniton thought it looked pretty cool so she got it.

At one point, Penni had got a balloon in the shape of a weird-looking yellow bird. The student who made it had to go through 3 other balloons that unfortunately popped in the making. Penniton loved her new helium-filled friend in all its rubbery glory.

“I think I’ll name you…” Penniton thought for a moment before a name came to her like deja vu, “Zach Henry Claudstine Featherflump the Second!”

The juvenile name caused the student to make a confused face at Penniton, who blinked a few times before letting out an awkward laugh. Where did that come from? The name spilled out of her mouth without a second thought.

At that moment, an eerie, creeky, and almost screeching sound came from the windows, caused by a strong gust of wind banging against the glass.

“Must’ve gotten windy out there” Chimed a boy, speaking to her friend.

“That’s strange though, the weather report said it was going to be clear all day.” Reminded the friend.

“Wow, look how dark it got out there,” A crowd of kids began forming, curious about the sudden change of weather.

Penniton stood up on the tip of her shoes, trying to see past the students out the window. Jeez, it did get really dark all of a sudden.

Penni's shoes lightly tapped the floor as she felt a familiar heavy feeling again. Maybe she should get back to Veneta, it’s been a while anyway so maybe she could use a bit of help?

Making her way back outside, Penni felt her whole body chill up as cold wind blasted in her face unexpectedly. What was going on?

Penni looked around, seeing that most of the stands were being packed up and moved inside, probably because of the worrisome weather.

It would be bad if any of them got rained on or destroyed by the extreme wind. Once Penniton had finally gotten to their ice cream stand, she was surprised to see it was empty- like Veneta had just abandoned it.

“Where in the world did you go?” Penni breathed, trying to think of where she had gone.

Her thoughts were broken when a yelp was heard and a student shouted ‘Watch out!’

Before Penniton could even blink, she saw a pitch-black, yellow-eyed creature lunged out in front of her, the same one from the woods. Everything she was still holding onto fell to the ground.

Some other students were quick to flail their arms around, attempting to scare it off, seeing it was outnumbered it scurried off out of sight. That’s when Penni was hit with an anxiety-inducing thought, what if Veneta was in trouble?

In a panic Penniton began searching through the area, her heart racing as she desperately looked out and called out to her friend, the scene began to get more chaotic as the voices of worried students filled the air.

“First the storm and now this! What’s going on today?”

“Let’s just hurry up and get inside, before we get hurt,”

“What about our booth?”

“Just leave it!”

What if Veneta was hurt?

“Are you two okay? What happened?

“One of those black monsters jumped out and got Ivan, he needs to see the nurse!”

What if Veneta got attacked?

Penniton inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she tried her best to calm her nerves. “Breathe, Penni, breathe,” In and out slowly, just like her mom taught her. “Deep breaths, everything will be alright.”

She paused for a moment, feeling her heartbeat slowen, “Think about it, where would Veneta be, what places do you go together a lot?” Penni asked herself, her eyes then shot open, her feet moving before she could even get the words out. Something just told her that’s where she’d find Veneta.

“The Backdrop!”

Penniton’s legs felt as if they could give out any moment, but they kept carrying her. Even as twigs and branches grazed and scratched her she kept going.

“Somewhere out here, she can’t be far-” Before Penniton could get another word out, a force of some sorts sent her tumbling to the ground with a strained ‘oof.’

Penni let out a strained curse, struggling to pick herself up before a gloved hand outstretched in front of her.

“You really can’t stay out of trouble, huh?” Spoke a familiar voice.

“It’s you,” Penniton said, taking his hand without a second thought as he pulled her up off the ground. The hooded man didn't seem phased at all by the chaos swirling around them, meanwhile, Penniton was struggling to keep her balance.

“Have you seen my friend, long red-orange hair, green eyes?” She asked, “Her name is Veneta, I think she’s somewhere out here.” The man shook his head, shrugging.

“The only one crazy enough to be out here is you kid,” The hooded man joked, “Believe me, anyone who was out here earlier is long gone.” Penniton furrowed her eyebrows

“And how about you, why aren’t you someplace else?” Penniton asked, not really expecting an answer.

“It’s dangerous out here for the both of us.” The man let out a laugh before pointing a gloved finger at Penniton.

“Unlike you, I can handle my own,” The hooded man said.

“You should be more concerned about yourself. Who’s to say this friend of yours even cares that much about you.”

He then shrugged, crossing his arms.

“Besides, she’s the one who chose to stray away, it's her funeral.”

Ouch, this guy always has something to say. What was his deal? Penni had a feeling she wouldn’t find that out anytime soon. Someone as mysterious as him wouldn’t give information like that away easily.

Penniton shook her head, refuting the man’s claim. “Veneta is my best friend, we both care about each other, alot! I could never leave her out here like that, not in a million years. I have to go find her.” She smiled slightly, looking up at him.

“And I know she would do the same for me.” Penniton turned away, getting ready to run off again, but stopped to say to the man, “By the way, I never did say it earlier so, thank you.” before continuing on to find Veneta.

The man’s face stayed stilled, never unchanging, he muttered some words no one could hear. “May your heart be your guiding key.” . . .

Penniton tumbled and shuffled through the darkness, it was so strange and terrifying at the same time. As if there was some invisible force clawing and blowing at Penni, it felt like something was trying to rip her very heart out. She could barely open her eyes, that was until she saw something, someone.

“Ve…Veneta?” Penniton felt relieved to see her, someone she trusted, her light in the dark.

Penniton navigated herself to Veneta, but the closer Penni got she realized there was something in the red-haired girl’s hand. It looked to be a large key of some sort, and Penniton swore she saw the faint image of other people talking to Veneta.

“Veneta!” Penniton called out.

The girl turned her around, wide-eyed, as she just broke out of a trance and was surprised to see Penni. Her face dropped into a depressive expression, her grip on the key tightening.

“Listen, Penni, I-” Veneta inhaled, before gently taking one of Penniton’s hands in hers.

“I’m sorry,” Veneta said in a calm voice.

“What?” Penni asked, her face scrunching up in confusion.

“For what?”

“For what I’m about to do.” Penniton began to feel herself be pulled back again by the roaring darkness surrounding the both of them, but Veneta seemed unaffected by it. The only thing keeping Penni grounded was Veneta’s keeping a firm grip on her hand.

“We probably won’t ever see each other again, if so, not as the same person.”

“Veneta, what in the world are you on about?” Penniton said with desperation in her voice, “Let’s just try and go find the dorms before this storm- hurricane? Gets worse.”

“That’s it Penni, you're not going anywhere.” Veneta looked down at the ground, an unknown expression on her face.

“Like I said, I’m sorry Penniton.”

And then she let go. ----------------------- A/N

Woo! After roughly 3 months of on and off writing I present to you the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. I can't promise I'll get the next part out in a shorter amount of time but do expect much more exciting stuff in the next parts from here!! By the way, this part contains 2 references from a different fiction, Sanctuary, so please do give it a read!

#kingdom hearts #fanfic #ao3 #non canon compliant #oc #writers on tumblr #writing #Back:drop #peaches writes

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